It is pointless - all I can do is delete the posts.
Actually I could use help - apparently someone has figured out how to automate spam attacks on the forum, so the problem is getting rapidly worse...
If I disable the account (and I've disabled several in the past week) they just create more. There are now dozens of spam accounts in the user database...
Your thoughts on this are rather well-documented, but would upgrading/switching to different forum software also help? Perhaps those who are tabbed as administrators could also assist in the upgrade/switch...
(Not that I'm volunteering for the post - just throwing out a suggestion. ![Smile [:)]](/emoticons/emotion-1.gif)
)
- Scott
You'll be happy to know that this weekend (hopefully) the forum will be upgraded to the latest (or near latest) version of the software.
This is being done by Blake Niemyjski, who has very generously agreed to do the upgrade.
I don't know whether this will solve the spam issue or not, but it will certainly address a number of other issues.
If spam is still an issue after the upgrade, I'd volunteer to filter out the spam.
Andy and Marjon, I have made you Moderators, which means you should be able to remove spam posts (there've already been a couple since the upgrade).
I think you can mark a user for moderation as well ("Moderate user") which means all their posts will require approval before being actually posted - which is basically a way of disabling a suspect user account.
I appreciate your help keeping a lid on the spam!
Cool, I'll keep an eye out for any new spam.
There are two other things you can do to help as moderators.
You should be able to moderate tags - which allows you to delete or rename tags. For example, renaming "databinding" to "Data binding" will merge the first tag into the second (which already exists), thus helping to keep the tags actually useful. A fair number of people have been using spaces to separate tags, which doesn't actually work - you need , or ; to separate them - so I've been trying to fix those as well by editing the tag on the actual post by adding the punctuation.
And you can verify answers. As you are reading a thread, if you see what is clearly an answer, please verify it as an answer so it is elevated to the top and so is more visible to people reading the thread in the future.
Ideally the original poster would verify answers - they'll read the answer and think "that's the answer!" and click the verify button. But that doesn't happen all that often so it is helpful if moderators do so too.
Thanks!!
Ok, will do!
Hello,
I found the best way is to update the banned user name filters and update the keyword lists every month or so. These bots are detectable because they all go off the same keywords. Catch them early and you don't have to worry about them for a while :).
Thanks
-Blake Niemyjski
Not a problem Rocky, will try and keep on top it!
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