WOW. I am all tired out from reporting those spam messages. It would be easier to report if the reporting message was exempt for the 47 second posting cycle. Even I can type faster than that :rolleyes:.
Have a great holiday to all the Chief Delphi Family.
Similarly, waiting 47 seconds to let y’all know I’ve deleted the spam is sometimes cumbersome.
The delay does, of course, also limit how frequently spammers can post as well.
GoJohnGoJohnGoJohnGoJohn!
Rock on and Thank you!
And you, too, Mad the Mod!
Happy 4th!
But doesn’t stop them from posting their junk.
Personally I find the 47 second delay a great annoyance.
What was that 5 spam messages reported in a row? Great job!
We should make it a contest, and count the number of reports each person can get. The person with the most is certifiably the biggest CD user. 
I noticed that this morning for the first time. (Reported my first spam message…) I guess it’s good that I’ve never had time to report any other messages. Good job patrolling the interweb!
Anyway, I do think the 47 second delay is somewhat annoying, but in the end, necessary. It seems that spammers still manage to post a lot of stuff here. Still, you never know. Maybe some spammer would just go and flood the site with spam if the delay is removed… I mean, at least the spam is manageable now.
If the reporting function did not count as a message, then it would be easier to report. That 47 seconds seems like a lifetime.
The time delay is adjustable, but the shorter it is, the greater benefit to the spammers. I am the admin in another forum (unrelated to robots) and the only effective way to get rid of spammers was to moderate all new members manually; even then a spammer slips in now and again.
Strangely I’ve never witnessed any spam on the other messageboards I post on.
Just this one. For some reason they love coming here and posting their stuff.
Do your other boards include electronics talk?
Most of the spam I see is electronics for sale.
When I report things, I normally post in the thread first, then click the report button.
I’ve never gotten a delay that way.
But for reporting multiple messages…
Movie and sports pages.
It’s typical for spammers to hit boards hard on the holidays. Less people on to deal with them, sometimes they time these things.
Well, let’s see. As I read it, issue is removing the 47 second delay for those reporting spam, and leaving it in place for everyone else, including spammers.
I think that it might just be easiest to post first, without delay, as Michelle said. However, if it is possible, could the whole process be expedited by making an auto-reply when reporting spam (with the regular “reported” reply)? The 47 second rule could remain, and it would encourage, and ease the process of reporting spam. I’m not completely sure if this can be done, or how easy it might be to implement, but I personally think it might be a good idea.
Well, that’s just my $0.02.
is it possible to spam the report button?
im thinking it should be a certain-users-without-the-delay sort of thing
Like, certain powers just for mods, and possibly other trusted, longtime users? I can see the merits of that, definitely.
Also, if anyone knows- have there ever been any past instances of the report button getting spammed in such a way? (I can’t really think of any reason why anyone would spam it like that…)
I don’t know of the report button getting spammed but everytime someone hits it an email is sent to all the mods. If you get multiple people reporting it the mods email inboxes become full of notices about the SAME problem. That’s why when the first person who sees the bad post/thread posts a message that they’re reporting it so other people don’t keep reporting it.
The report button might also put a message in the hidden moderator forum on here, not sure about that though.
Sounds to me like the report button functionality needs a little bit of reworking… like it disables after a single user hits it. That would make the moderators only get 1 email per problem, and would eliminate the need for a delay on the reporting system
The problem is, the report button is probably a standard part of the vBulletin package. To change how it works is probably more work than its worth for the amount of spam CD gets.
This has come up in the past and I said I would try to work out some better methods to report and curb spam.
Current:
User reports. E-mail goes to all mods. Thread is created in mod area. User replies. Many times multiple users report, causing multiple e-mails and replies to the mod-thread.
Proposed:
User reports. E-Mail goes to all mods. Thread is created in mod area. A ‘reported’ reply is automatically added to original thread. Report-to-mod functionality is disabled for that thread for 1 hour, to prevent duplicate reportings.
I’m also going to go through the ‘reported post’ e-mails and see who reports the most consistently. It looks about time to find some more moderators, especially those who are so active.