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Spam :( (Read 17622 times)

fry YaBB Moderator Offline Posts: 2623 mass, usa	Re: Spam :( Reply #15 - Feb 8^th, 2010, 3:10pm And thanks to all who have been helping to keep the boards clean. I had hoped to get the next release out this weekend but lost too much time Saturday feebly dealing with the spam problem, so it's just an enormous help to have you guys pitching in.

blindfish

Re: Spam :(
Reply #16 - Feb 8^th, 2010, 3:16pm

When there are a lot of these posts to the same board on the same day it's easy enough to spot them, but when they're made in isolation it's a little more difficult. For instance the game programming post got a response from koogy, which I then responded to (though by that point koogy's answer had been removed for some strange reason - well it seemed strange at the time; now seems obvious) and a whole thread ensued (which in actual fact was interesting enough anyway). I now realise that it was just another one of these bogus posts Embarrassed

The problem is we do occasionally get people here with a poor grasp of English who seem incapable of asking a question properly, but who are in fact genuine...

I think koogy might be right though: the answer is probably to pay people to spot spammers, since they do seem to be relying on low-paid workers to post spam why not use low-paid workers against them or some kind of crowd-sourcing initiative There must be a solution!

Spam is evil Angry

Where is the what if the what is in why?

donhavey

Re: Spam :(
Reply #17 - Feb 8^th, 2010, 9:19pm

blindfish wrote on Feb 8^th, 2010, 3:16pm:

the answer is probably to pay people to spot spammers, since they do seem to be relying on low-paid workers to post spam why not use low-paid workers against them or some kind of crowd-sourcing initiative

That is kind of a great idea. Spamming is basically the only no-skills-needed web job (along with maybe survey taking). We should squeeze it out of the internet economy by creating an equally easy, profitable way to clean spam. Seems like it might call for a new user type across all boards... like some sort of universal valet key... allows a spam cleaner to access any site, but only to flag entries as spam.

Nothing like the power of crowdsourced brains to defeat spamming AIs. Well... now that I think about it... spam cleaning should probably be automated too. It's just the spam-scrubbing protocol that's missing.

subpixel

Re: Spam :(
Reply #18 - Feb 9^th, 2010, 12:47am

fry wrote on Feb 8^th, 2010, 3:06pm:

But the bottom line was that separate from Casey's original post, it was completely off-topic for this discussion board, so I decided to simply remove it.

I take issue with the suggestion that Casey's pro Clinton, pro Bush, pro Obama post was on-topic whereas a contrary point of view is off-topic, and suggest that is not a reasonable position, but will leave it at this mention since I don't want to be here for political arguments and it is satisfactory to me that both views (not only my contrary view) were removed.

I am curious as to whether Casey has had any second thoughts about his support for the project (and/or the names attached to it), but not so curious as to pester him to find out. So long as an alternate view is allowed equally to be expressed, I am not too concerned.

-spxl

Processing: subpixels.com, OpenProcessing.org | VJ portfolio: SPXL.TV

PhiLho

Re: Spam :(
Reply #19 - Feb 9^th, 2010, 4:45am

Cedric wrote on Feb 8^th, 2010, 1:18pm:

i am still deleting these posts cause i believe there is no reason to let them be successful infiltrating this board. if you dont delete these messages, they wont stop.

Well, I leave the benefit of doubt, as we have no means to know what users are generated by the spammers, and who are the legitimate new users.

I am now slightly stricter: except in Exhibition where it is common place for a long time ("Cool.", "Nice sketch" reactions), ultra-generic answers to other questions from new users are just removed, since they bring only noise anyway...

Cedric God Member Offline Posts: 1838	Re: Spam :( Reply #20 - Feb 9^th, 2010, 5:18am what i realized is that i lose the motivation in helping especially new people cause i am not sure if it is a real question or just some spammer asking something he is not interested in anyway. This is fatal cause it ruins the quality of this board.
	twitter.com/CedricKiefer

koogy

Re: Spam :(
Reply #21 - Feb 9^th, 2010, 5:51am

same as cedric, my paranoia levels are quite high at the moment, and i suspect everybody, which isn't great.

> I think koogy might be right though: the answer is probably to pay
> people to spot spammers

that was kinda a joke (is what the british army has just proposed as a solution for afghanistan...).

i don't think this is going to stop until new registrations are blocked (temporarily) and all the old, suspect subscriptions are deleted (start with those with spam urls in their sigs and the 0 posts people). they do seem happy enough just registering a lot of the time, as if that's the entire goal. there've been another 8 pages (8*16) of registrations TODAY.

koogy

Re: Spam :(
Reply #22 - Feb 11^th, 2010, 6:12am

interesting thread:
http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/p/160637/362364.aspx

WayneA1970s:
http://processing.org/discourse/yabb2/action_viewprofile_username_5C5A4C5B181E1019290.html

ronmeadows:
http://processing.org/discourse/yabb2/action_viewprofile_username_657879397A727673786064170.html

ahunt1988:
http://processing.org/discourse/yabb2/action_viewprofile_username_3138253E24500.html

it says at the bottom of all our posts: "ip address logged". is the ip addresses of all these people saying anything useful

gll

Re: Spam :(
Reply #23 - Feb 11^th, 2010, 9:08am

Quote:

But the bottom line was that separate from Casey's original post, it was completely off-topic for this discussion board, so I decided to simply remove it.

I do understand that you get a lot of spam and I suppose that spending your time cleaning this forum might be a tedious and boring task. Thank you for this. Sorry if I confused you guys with this 'off-topic' thread, but this is probably the thread I spent the most time to write.

5 days later, I could start to laugh about it... Wink

I think something should be done right now. It became completely unusable. Is it the first time you get attacks like this?

Is there a problem with retaining registrations at least for one day?

LaBelle / ANAR.ch / LaBelle.spaceKIT.ca

PhiLho YaBB Moderator Offline Posts: 4190 Near Paris (France)	Re: Spam :( Reply #24 - Feb 13^th, 2010, 3:53am They are getting smarter... or not. I just deleted a message from "Mandi" which just took my answer in Need help with own program (after the OP said it solved his problem) with just "Hi Haukeh \n I think the solution to your little challenge is this." and "I hope this is useful to you" around it.

koogy God Member Offline Posts: 788	Re: Spam :( Reply #25 - Feb 13^th, 2010, 5:18am same with the Best Way To Learn Processing thread, they're just parroting answers from further up. http://processing.org/discourse/yabb2/num_1264151149.html half the people there are just sockpuppets with 0 days and 1 post. stopping registrations and deleting the bogus accounts is the only way to stop this.

PhiLho

Re: Spam :(
Reply #26 - Feb 13^th, 2010, 9:04am

Mmm, looking again at the thread, I see some of these sock puppets has added commercial links in their signature, as feared. The worst is they had valid advices in them ("See Learning Processing book"), perhaps stolen from another thread...
Scrubbed hard this thread to remove useless comments.

I wish signatures wouldn't be retroactive in this forum...

gll

Re: Spam :(
Reply #27 - Feb 13^th, 2010, 9:45am

To enable captcha in YABB:
In Admin Center - Security Center> Security Settings = Validation Image Tab

To suspend registrations in YABB.pl:
http://yabb.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/yabb/trunk/cgi-bin/yabb3/revision_184_amp_view_markup.html
Code:

# Guest can do the very few following actions
&KickGuest if $iamguest && !$guestaccess && $GLOBAL::ACTION  !~ /^(login|register|reminder|validate|activate|resetpass|guestpm|checkavail|$randaction)2?$/;

I suppose you could remove 'register' from the actions for guests and figure a better long term solution.

LaBelle / ANAR.ch / LaBelle.spaceKIT.ca

subpixel Senior Member Offline Posts: 261	Re: Spam :( Reply #28 - Feb 13^th, 2010, 1:15pm "Naked" airport scanner technology will save us! Not. Is there an option to have some number of first posts by users moderated? And do moderators get a 'nuke this mofo' link with every post to reduce trigger-finger delays? -spxl
	Processing: subpixels.com, OpenProcessing.org \| VJ portfolio: SPXL.TV

PhiLho YaBB Moderator Offline Posts: 4190 Near Paris (France)	Re: Spam :( Reply #29 - Feb 16^th, 2010, 10:01am At least, these guys have some sense of humor (or of teasing...), posting a message here (from tata carmen) with a spam link in signature...

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