Obviously no mod is monitoring the forums - Part 2?

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Mon Aug 04, 2014 4:22 pm

{sarcasm}For some inexplicable reason {/sarcasm}, the moderators locked the previous thread on this topic. Over this last weekend they did a reasonable job of keeping the spam down. But here it is 11:15am and the spam started hitting at 10:21 am now filling a full page of the forum and not a global moderator or even a general moderator on site (general moderators cannot delete afaik). Come on, guys - you have had a number of reputable people volunteer for the role. It's obvious you are not up to the task under the present circumstances. Install some of the new volunteers as global moderators.

Post by **pe7er** » Mon Aug 04, 2014 4:32 pm

Are you referring to the spammer that joined the forum on 04 August 2014 17:17:05 my local time,
posted 27 messages that have " *** Please report me for spamming ***" in the subject line,
and that we have banned on 04 August 2014, 18:03:58 my local time?

We are doing our best to keep the forum clean. This one was banned within an hour....

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Mon Aug 04, 2014 6:19 pm

pe7er wrote:We are doing our best to keep the forum clean. This one was banned within an hour....

Yes, that is the one and your efforts are appreciated. Any reason why the spam labelled with the " *** Please report me for spamming ***" " in the subject line cannot be automatically deleted? or something along these lines:

Set up an approval queue for the first post. In PHPBB 3.0.3, this option was added.

Browse to your Admin Control Panel
Select the General Tab
On the left hand side, under Board Configuration, select Post Settings
Find the Enable Queued Posts option and set this to 1
You (or your moderators) will have to approve these posts for them to appear. Once that first post is approved, the user will be able to post normally.

The next option involves modifications to the board itself. One such modification is the Anti-Spam ACP. On it's release page, the following features are listed:

Akismet Integration
One Click Ban
Stop Forum Spam Integration
Spam word catcher (like word censor, except makes posts by authors with less than X posts need approval if the post contains any of the words in the list)
Disabling of certain profile fields until X number of posts (or require or always disable)
User Flag (Allows you to flag a user (and unflag after they've been flagged). Once flagged, actions performed by that user to their profile, or editing of posts, or adding posts gets listed on a log in the ACP.)
Spam Log
IP Search

A third option is the Advanced Block MOD. This adds multiple blacklists to your forum. It allows you to add certain weights to specific blacklists (you pick what you like best) but does have a decent set of defaults that I'd suggest you run with for a little while. It adds a Block Log to your ACP as well. You'll quickly see that there are many bots being blocked with this mod.

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 7:39 pm

So far this weekend using the forums has been a pleasure. (Hope I am not jinxing anything!)

Very few spammers and most of those were taken care of in a reasonable time. Either the spammers died off (hard to believe) or the mods are doing a really good job!

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Sun Aug 24, 2014 12:59 am

Three hours and counting for the football spam on Saturday evening. Not a global moderator in sight.

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 1:07 pm

Middle of the week. So far about a page of spam since about 4:20 am my time. Now 8 am. Surely there is more that can be done as I have previously suggested?

nikkyg · Post by **nikkyg** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 1:35 pm

I agree! Too many spam posts. I come here and try to help in my spare time - which I guess is not really going to do much good right now. I am getting out of here for now

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Sun Sep 14, 2014 2:29 am

Another Saturday - Another day of SPAM. 11:57 am my time to 9:25 pm my time. That's 9 hours and 28 minutes either without a global moderator or without a global moderator who cared enough to remove the spam on the forum.

Come on moderators - there are ways in this forum to reduce the amount of spam. I have made suggestions and so have others. You obviously are not up to task. Implement the suggestions. Add new global moderators. Or step down.

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 2:32 am

Sunday evening. Only a couple of SPAMs present at 9:30 pm my time. Unfortunately, one of them is from 2:38 pm my time. So, only 5 hours and 8 minutes without a global moderator to clean up the forums. Glad it's only a couple of spams so far...

alikon · Post by **alikon** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 12:16 pm

Monday 12 utc some spam deleted no dhuelsmann online to report spam presence, quite
strange
Have a nice next weekend

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Mon Sep 15, 2014 12:54 pm

alikon wrote:Monday 12 utc some spam deleted no dhuelsmann online to report spam presence, quite
strange
Have a nice next weekend

Figuring out times across countries, etc. is always confusing for me. If we use utc, it would seem Nebraska at -5 utc (DST) that would make it 7 pm here: 2.5 hours ahead of my report. However, if we use the time of @alikon's post it would be some 9.7 or so hours later making it some 14+ hours before a global mod cleaned up the spam. I don't know which is correct but I do know that the global moderators need to find a better way to keep spam off of the forums.

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:35 pm

Saturday again - No Alikon around to remove spam. Earliest one is 1:40 am CDT my time. Currently 3:34 pm my time. It continuous to be obvious that there are not enough global mods spread out among enough time zones to really be effective. Nor does there seem to be any effort to solicit more or add more if they are waiting in the background. Would love to see some effort expended to improve the forum experience!

alikon · Post by **alikon** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 4:46 am

FYI i suffer for a strange disease called "saturday night fever"
that prevents me from being online, I'm trying to cure myself.

p.s
thanks from reporting spam from far Fri May 09, 2008 on vietnamese subforum

xfsgpr · Post by **xfsgpr** » Mon Oct 06, 2014 2:36 am

Spam seems to be a real problem these days and unless something concrete is done, we are likely to see these forums becoming a spammers' paradise.

dhuelsmann · Post by **dhuelsmann** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 7:03 pm

Five pages of spam posts starting at around midnight and continuing till now which is 1 pm my time. So about 13 hours of spam with no global moderator in site. Obviously none of the suggestions made earlier have been implemented and none of those who volunteered to help have been taken up on their offer. The huge amount of spam makes for a very inhospitable forum.

Post by **toivo** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 11:52 am

It happened again. This must be a record - 12 pages of the proverbial by now.

Can't anyone tweak the forum code to configure some limits and prevent any new user from creating 300 posts in four hours?

Post by **toivo** » Sat Nov 08, 2014 12:54 pm

The previous pages were deleted but the same flood started again.

Does the forum not have a language filter which could direct entries like that into a moderation queue if the post is not targeting a subforum in the International Zone?

This is a real problem. It undermines the credibility of Joomla if our support community has not found a solution by now. There must be simple workarounds to stop spammers from inundating the forums but where is the will to test and implement possible solutions?

khaos-rage · Post by **khaos-rage** » Sun Nov 16, 2014 4:03 pm

Funny enough, came here to suggest/post that someone should read this post from phpBB.com which says not to use reCaptcha because it's broken and I get this message upon registration lol

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Obviously no mod is monitoring the forums - Part 2?

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