Spambot Prevention Suggestions

[Caleb Sykes]

Require new accounts to receive at least some positive reputation before they're allowed to create a new thread, which is where most spam goes.

I disagree. I made my CD account specifically to ask a time-sensitive question during the build season. There is no way that I would have even bothered if I had had to weigh in on other discussions and wait for someone nice to give me rep points. I had, in fact, searched through CD several times, and my question hadn't been asked.

OK, if image verification or IP blacklisting won't work, why not ask a FIRST related question. For example, what was the 2011 game name? Or, Which country are 1114 and 2056 located in? Or, what is one FRC supported programming language?

I didn't learn about 1114 and 2056 until the end of the 3rd year on my team. "Common knowledge" on CD is, quite frankly, not common knowledge for a lot of students/mentors out there.

[techhelpbb]

Ask FIRST for the list of mentors they use to control access to the official question forum.
Then ask those mentors to register at ChiefDelphi.
Then give them the ability to confirm team member registrations.

No confirmation ... no post without moderation.

Set up modrewrite on this domain.
Track inbound IP.
Anyone claiming to be one place posting from more than 1 adjacent state/province not mentor approved gets flagged.
Saves moderation time.

Use Bayesian rules to flag posts.

Any post flagged by 2 confirmed mentors is redacted prior to review.

Hyperlinks are shortened. Checked by SourceFire, RBL and local black list.
This allows caching as well.
Any non-confirmed poster with less then 10 posts no hyperlinks allowed.
Allow any confirmed users to flag a hyperlink as a threat then setup a warning or make it text.

Allow donations over $15.
Allow donations of FIRST items ChiefDelphi can resell.
Allow donors to select to be listed if they like.

Expire confirmed accounts after 4 years.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

Ask FIRST for the list of mentors they use to control access to the official question forum.
Then ask those mentors to register at ChiefDelphi.
Then give them the ability to confirm team member registrations.

Not happening, for the following reasons:
1) Probably half the mentors won't register, unless it's required (and FIRST won't require it, I'm sure). And confirming team member registrations? Har.
2) The odds of a spambot using a given team number are slim--but the odds of them using 0000 are pretty decent.
3) Restricts Chief Delphi to only FIRSTers--which doesn't help with growing FIRST at all.

Essentially, that places a burden on the mods the first few times any given new member posts. As I noted earlier, I think the mod list needs a shakeup before any more work is placed on them.

The location tracking, and mentor approval... I think that's a bit clunky.

Oh, wait, I know! What's the most current version of vBulletin again, and which version are we on? (hint: they aren't the same)

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by EricH

Not happening, for the following reasons:
1) Probably half the mentors won't register, unless it's required (and FIRST won't require it, I'm sure). And confirming team member registrations? Har.
2) The odds of a spambot using a given team number are slim--but the odds of them using 0000 are pretty decent.
3) Restricts Chief Delphi to only FIRSTers--which doesn't help with growing FIRST at all.

Essentially, that places a burden on the mods the first few times any given new member posts. As I noted earlier, I think the mod list needs a shakeup before any more work is placed on them.

The location tracking, and mentor approval... I think that's a bit clunky.

Oh, wait, I know! What's the most current version of vBulletin again, and which version are we on? (hint: they aren't the same)

I think you misunderstood. The confirmed users get full access with no restriction immediately. Non-confirmed members get some restrictions.
So if your team leader will not bother you still can post. Just deal with some restrictions initially. Ten post limits on hyperlinks exist on other forums. Membership durations on certain features exist on other forums. If FIRST will not provide the list or as you said the team leaders are not cooperating then allow cross team confirmation.

IP location tracking not only works I personally implemented it on sites that control 10% of the world's finances. You just need to be clever with it. You never use it as a completely automated blacklist. You use it to get a feel for who your customers are and their consistency as a moderation tool. If you know it is unusual for users to pop in from China then flag those posts. Moderation is *so* much less work when you mine your data intelligently. If the moderation is a problem now. What would happen if the post count doubles? In theory it is desirable to grow FIRST so a doubled post count should be positive but if as a moderator the job is too big now....well?

[artdutra04]

99.9% of the moderating I do is deleting spam. So here are some points:

1. For a while before last build season, all posts from new users had to approved by a moderator. On average, there seemed to be a 24-48 hour backlog on posts. Some users would then try to post again... and again... and again... and again because they did not see the posts show up immediately. This created almost as many problems as it solved.

2. The most viable method to preventing spam is to prohibit users that have under 50 posts OR less than 300 points (three green bars) in reputation from:
- Posting hyperlinks in posts or signature
- Editing their own posts

3. Some sub-forums have like 50 moderators, so chances are higher that someone will delete it sooner. Other really obscure and hardly ever used sub-forums have like 3 total moderators, and spam posts there can linger for months and months. I suggest we both significantly prune/lock/archive these forums and add some more active moderators to the remaining forums.

I've seen some spammers go on a 10-20 post blitz of posting worthless drivel posts to get their post count up. 50 posts and 300 points should be a high enough threshold to discourage most spammers. And no hyperlinks of any kind make spam posts worthless.

Maybe to help get some extra money, users under 50 posts or 300 rep points that donate to CD can have these restrictions immediately removed.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

99.9% of the moderating I do is deleting spam. So here are some points:

1. For a while before last build season, all posts from new users had to approved by a moderator. On average, there seemed to be a 24-48 hour backlog on posts. Some users would then try to post again... and again... and again... and again because they did not see the posts show up immediately. This created almost as many problems as it solved.

That works much better when the yet to be released posts are merely redacted.
Just post a place holder: Awaiting post approval. At least send an e-mail to the poster.

Then people know what is going on and not flood you.

You could do away with hyperlinks if you snapshot the target website.
Think like Google cache which is a spider.
You can get a picture of the canvas object in Mozilla and Chrome browsers.
Though this could get costly.

[protoserge]

Is there any possibility of updating the forum software to the current version 5?

Here is a list of plugins to help prevent spambots: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...ation-requests

[Cory]

I think if users under a post count threshold post more than maybe 3 (insert amenable number here) links in their post/signature they should automatically get sent to moderation.

The timely removal of spam is definitely because there's very few moderators in some of the forums that weren't getting spammed until recently. I know more moderators were added a year or two ago, but it didn't really help much (I think only one or two of them is actually still active on Chief). I take down stuff whenever I get the notification but anything in obscure forums takes longer since there's only a handful of active moderators as Art said.

[Akash Rastogi]

How does one volunteer to help moderate the forums?

[Pault]

I think if we add on some moderation to posting links it should include a list of approved websites that don't need to be checked. Most links on here lead to either chiefdelphi.com or youtube.com, so by saying those are automatically approved would really lessen the burden on moderators.

[Chris is me]

In VB there is also the possibility of making users Super Moderators. This allows them to delete spam in any forum but stops short of giving the user Administrator privileges. I don't know how many of those CD has, but that might be helpful for spam removal purposes.

I also like Pault's suggestion: Make a whitelist of allowed links for posters who have under X posts and / or have been around for less than Y days. If the users need to link to something else, I'm sure we could just copy and paste a plaintext URL to see what the user is talking about. Not having hyperlinks for new users is a small price to pay that would really help I think.

It's cool to see this community come together to brainstorm solutions to problems like these. I'm happy to help however possible with the spam problem.

[jwallace15]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

In VB there is also the possibility of making users Super Moderators. This allows them to delete spam in any forum but stops short of giving the user Administrator privileges. I don't know how many of those CD has, but that might be helpful for spam removal purposes.

It would be a lot more useful than reporting everything for a couple people to delete it. Perhaps everyone who has rep level "reputation beyond repute" (I'm not sure how many points that is, I'm assuming either 1500 or 2000) or something like that could be granted this privilege.

I'm sure those with lower reps would like to volunteer to do that, too. I know I wouldn't mind helping out.

[Pault]

Originally Posted by jwallace15

It would be a lot more useful than reporting everything for a couple people to delete it. Perhaps everyone who has rep level "reputation beyond repute" (I'm not sure how many points that is, I'm assuming either 1500 or 2000) or something like that could be granted this privilege.

I'm sure those with lower reps would like to volunteer to do that, too. I know I wouldn't mind helping out.

I like the idea, but something just doesn't feel right to me giving that much power to that many people who aren't manually approved. I'm sure it would be sometimes used against posts that someone thinks are un-gp, which isn't right. So here's my revision of that idea:

People with a full rep bar or other approved people gain the privilege to flag a post . If 3 people flag a post, it is automatically moved to a separate forum that only moderators can see. The mods can then go through that forum and delete all actual spam posts. If they come across something that isn't supposed to be there, they can return it to where it once was and issue a warning to the people who flagged it. 2 warnings and that person loses his/her privilege to flag.

One other benefit of this system is that there would be no more problems where the spam is posted in a forum without any active moderators.

[DonRotolo]

it is possible in VB to restrict users with certain characteristics* from posting links. I would venture to say that is isn't spam unless it has hyperlinks.

*For example, number of posts, rep points, and so on.

[cbale2000]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

1. For a while before last build season, all posts from new users had to approved by a moderator. On average, there seemed to be a 24-48 hour backlog on posts. Some users would then try to post again... and again... and again... and again because they did not see the posts show up immediately. This created almost as many problems as it solved.

I'm guilty of having done this before myself on a different forum (though on that forum doing it too often could get you banned).

This happens when it's not immediately clear to new users why their posts aren't showing up. Typically forums tell you your post is awaiting approval in the redirect page after you click "submit", but honestly, no one ever reads those. What you need is a bright red font message right above the "submit" button telling you that your post will need to be approved.


That all said, I do have a few thoughts that might help reduce spam (some of these have already been mentioned but are worth repeating) ...

• First 5-10 posts a user creates require a CAPTCHA to post (prevents human registration - bot posting)
• Add a generic FIRST-related question to the registration (if it already had one, perhaps add a second).
• Make threads reported by multiple (~100+ post) users get moved to an invisible moderation forum so they're not seen while awaiting mod review.
• Block hyper-linking from users with less than 5-10 posts.