Too much spam

[Joe Redifer]

Well, any spam is too much spam. But now this site is the target of spam bots. At my forum I used to just delete the threads (physically removing them) and ban the poster. But that doesn't prevent new spam.

Go into your Administrator Control Panel and create a new user group. Call it whatever you like. Make it so that all new members are automatically a part of this group. Make this group's permissions the same as the regular group except they cannot start new threads and they cannot send PMs. After 5 regular posts, they automatically graduate into the normal user group (and can create new threads and send PMs). I did this at Magic Box and we haven't had a single spam post since December 1, 2006 and we used to get an average of about 5 to 8 new spam threads a day.

Do it.

[Drixxel]

Wouldn't a 1 day probationary period be enough to ward away the spamming hordes? Hell, 1 hour would probably do the trick.

EDIT: Nevermind, I just did a lil' check on our friendly new spambot companion Uco something something and there was a cunning 5-day span betwixt registration and spam launch. Your wisdom holds true, ol' Joe.

EDIT ROUND 2: In my brain, the word "posts" somehow became "hours."

[Melf]

This is an excellent idea Joe, and I've implemented it. Hopefully it will end the spam attacks we've been experiencing.

[Joe Redifer]

Keep in mind that the vBulletin software usually updates every hour or two (I forget), but people who JUST made their 5th post won't be upgraded to the regular group until vBulletin goes and does its little update. That confused me for awhile when I was testing the auto-graduation or whatever it's called.

[Melf]

I set it at ten, just to be safe. I assume that they automatically join the probationary group when they join, since I set it so that new users would graduate to the registered user group. Is there a setting somewhere I have to set to make that happen?

[Joe Redifer]

Hold on, I'll check how I have mine set up...

[Joe Redifer]

OK I have my special group (which I call "Spam Buffer Group") set up like this under the EDIT PROMOTIONS category:

http://pixelcraze.film-tech.net/crap/usergroup.jpg

Under USER REGISTRATION OPTIONS (click on vBulletin Options) and then choose this from the menu) I have MODERATE NEW MEMBERS checked to ON. This will send new members to the COPPA usergroup. I made this usergroup have the same permissions as my SPAM BUFFER usergroup, but I gave it an auto-promotion to the spam group. Here are my COPPA promotion settings:

http://pixelcraze.film-tech.net/crap/coppa.jpg

Seems a bit complicated, but it works.

[VinnyT]

Are you a mod yet?

Want to be?

Seeing as it's really just Ken and Me now, maybe we should implement you, along with the new staff as being granted modship.

[Joe Redifer]

If Melf agrees I'd do it. There won't be much to mod any more with the spam being taken care of, as this forum is usually pretty sane (fortunately).

[Mr Smith]

What about all the poor buggers who want the tech aid? They now won't be able to discover what's going on with their machines.

A few spam posts every few weeks is hardly the end of the world and it's not like the mods here are overworked with incidents. I also quite like the witty banter spam posts can bring out.

[Zebbe]

Will the "hey my sega cd is broken help me"-people who create a new thread in the Sega CD/Tech Aid forum at their first post be informed that they must do five/ten posts before they can make threads?

[Elusive]

Yeah, this could backfire - we could see people registering just to ask how to set up a 32X, seeing they can't make a thread, and finding some topic to +1 in. Why not simply sticky a thread along the lines of 'post here to be activated!', or even a message asking new users to PM an admin to be activated?

[Joe Redifer]

Or the person with trouble could always bump up an older thread. It's not like every problem hasn't already been discussed thrice.

[Zebbe]

Haha, exactly. It will FORCE them to do that - which will save us from dozens of new "sega cd problem"-threads.

[VinnyT]

I've sticky-ed general question posts on Tech Aid, so new posters can ask their questions.

[Lhadatt]

Thanks for the moderation tips Joe. I've looked over the implementation with Ken and it seems to work. I'd do this on Got Next, but that board will go away as soon as I can get some other stuff implemented (read: two weeks from never, if work has anything to say about it).

[Melf]

Or the person with trouble could always bump up an older thread. It's not like every problem hasn't already been discussed thrice.
Exactly. New posters can't make new threads until they have 10 posts, but they can still bump older threads. There aren't so many threads in Tech Aid that we won't know if something's been bumped. I'll update the site FAQ so new users will know what's up.

And Joe, you've got a PM!

You have to remember, I authorize each new member, one by one, to ensure that there's as little spam as possible. For every one bot that gets through, I've denied entry to dozens and dozens. This will make my job much easier.

I've spoken to Josh, our network administrator, and he's tweaked everything so that new members must join a probationary group until they "graduate" to registered users after 10 posts. Hopefull, this will end our spam problem.