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triplepoint
Hazard to Others
Posts: 127
Registered: 11-4-2012
Location: U.S.
Member Is Offline
Mood: in equilibrium
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These spam posters probably do not know or much care about monitoring their views. Aside from making the account, the posting is probably pretty
automated.
Also, even with no replies, these posts crowd out and push down legitimate poster on the Todays Posts view. I don't know about everyone else, but
that's how I usually view the board.
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hissingnoise
International Hazard
Posts: 3940
Registered: 26-12-2002
Member Is Offline
Mood: Pulverulescent!
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Oh, I'd say just enough monitoring goes on to assure them they're not actually wasting their time . . .
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malcolmf
Harmless
Posts: 20
Registered: 21-1-2012
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Doesn't work with so called Search Engine Optimizers
They don't care if no-one here reads their posts. That helps them, delaying deletion. Just so long as Google's crawler sees the posts before they get
deleted, and PageRank ups the rating of whatever site has its links scattered so liberally in the posting.
We're not the intended market.
[Edited on 27-10-2012 by malcolmf]
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12AX7
Post Harlot
Posts: 4803
Registered: 8-3-2005
Location: oscillating
Member Is Offline
Mood: informative
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Do crawlers and bots produce views? I would think so? Whether they can see anything at all depends on the robots.txt settings and how the server and
forum are configured.
Tim
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cyanureeves
National Hazard
Posts: 744
Registered: 29-8-2010
Location: Mars
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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i swear i saw a spambot try to answer a member's question instead of it usually being the top post. they are getting smarter and maybe one day they
are going to show us how to make nike shoes in a Rb flask.
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malcolmf
Harmless
Posts: 20
Registered: 21-1-2012
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Quote: Originally posted by cyanureeves  | | i swear i saw a spambot try to answer a member's question instead of it usually being the top post. they are getting smarter and maybe one day they
are going to show us how to make nike shoes in a Rb flask. |
Oh, if only....
I am reminded of this: http://xkcd.com/810/
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Twospoons
International Hazard
Posts: 1324
Registered: 26-7-2004
Location: Middle Earth
Member Is Offline
Mood: A trace of hope...
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How about we make it cost $1 to register? At least we'd be making money to support the site if the spammers continue to create accounts.
Helicopter: "helico" -> spiral, "pter" -> with wings
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting for spring
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Spam slaying code now active
I have written a program that automatically uses spam reports from members to get rid of spam and spammers.
Here's how it works:
Report a spam post and give the reason as "spam." This is what most members already do when reporting spam.
When two trusted members* have reported a post as spam, it will be considered as spam if the spam-poster is less than 30 days old. The vast majority
of real spam accounts are this young. I put in this check to prevent people from abusing the spam system by calling real members spammers.
When a post has been determined by the above checks to be spam, all of the spammer's threads and posts are deleted, followed by the spammer account. I
rely on multiple independent spam reports to avoid false positives.
A cron job now runs the spam-killing check every 2 minutes.
Note to moderators: sorry for all the spam reports left in your inboxes. I have added some code to remove spam reports that have already been dealt
with, but it was not active for the big purge that just ran.
*Members who have previously been good at reporting spam, picked by me from reviewing my spam report U2Us.
[Edited on 7-8-2013 by Polverone]
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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elementcollector1
International Hazard
Posts: 2684
Registered: 28-12-2011
Location: The Known Universe
Member Is Offline
Mood: Molten
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Oh, whoops. Didn't even see this post.
Still, that program is going to come in real handy if it works. Thanks, Polverone!
Does the program have something to determine if 'spam'' is in the report, or would something like "Spam..." not get through?
Elements Collected:52/87
Latest Acquired: Cl
Next in Line: Nd
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting for spring
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Any reported post containing 'spam', by itself or admixed with other words, will count.
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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froot
Hazard to Others
Posts: 347
Registered: 23-10-2003
Location: South Africa
Member Is Offline
Mood: refluxed
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Very clever idea, well done.
We salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who remove themselves from it.
Of necessity, this honor is generally bestowed posthumously. - www.darwinawards.com |
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Eddygp
National Hazard
Posts: 858
Registered: 31-3-2012
Location: University of York, UK
Member Is Offline
Mood: Organometallic
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When GoogleBot sees a post, it checks for keywords and inserts an ad based on that. If a spammer posts a lot of posts of for example web pages, there
will sonn be ads on that. That is why Science madness had once gold, silver and platinum prices ads.
there may be bugs in gfind
[ˌɛdidʒiˈpiː] IPA pronunciation for my Username |
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woelen
Super Administrator
Posts: 8012
Registered: 20-8-2005
Location: Netherlands
Member Is Offline
Mood: interested
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Polverone, this is a very good addition to the software. I have been wading through tens of reported posts and lately even through nearly 100 of them
because I was a few days offline. Automatic removal of spam is great and if a few spam items remain then that is no problem, those can be handled
manually. Now we can focus more on other things like cookery-threads, abuse of energetics and that kind of things 
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malcolmf
Harmless
Posts: 20
Registered: 21-1-2012
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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It's gone a lot quieter around here.
I noticed one quirk: when a spammer post gets deleted, if they were the last post in a section, they stay listed as the latest post until someone else
posts there. As I write this, Honey360 was the most recent post in Forum Matters.
And at the moment, Honey360 is the last poster in Legal and Societal Issues, though that poster seems to have vanished
It's not a problem needing fixing, it's nice seeing the ghosts of departed spammers.
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mr.crow
National Hazard
Posts: 884
Registered: 9-9-2009
Location: Canada
Member Is Offline
Mood: 0xFF
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I posted 4 spam reports in a row last night. Probably just pissed off some mods. Only certain people can auto-delete reported spam? Guess it would be
too easy to abuse otherwise
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting for spring
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| Quote: Originally posted by mr.crow | | I posted 4 spam reports in a row last night. Probably just pissed off some mods. Only certain people can auto-delete reported spam? Guess it would be
too easy to abuse otherwise |
You are already on the trusted list of spam reporters. But a second trusted person needs to confirm your report for at least one of those reported
spam messages before the messages and spammer will be removed.
Note to mods: you can report a spam post too, and it requires only a single moderator report to delete the spam and spammer. This is faster if you
encounter a prolific spammer that needs many posts removed. Within 5 minutes it will all be cleaned up. I never manually delete spam and spammers now,
I just report one of the messages myself.
As an additional bonus for moderators, when you let the spam-killing tool work instead of manually deleting posts, it will also remove related unread
spam reports from your inbox. You won't need to manually review them only to find they were reporting posts you already deleted.
[Edited on 11-9-2012 by Polverone]
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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watson.fawkes
International Hazard
Posts: 2793
Registered: 16-8-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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| Quote: Originally posted by Polverone | | As an additional bonus for moderators, when you let the spam-killing tool work instead of manually deleting posts, it will also remove related unread
spam reports from your inbox. |
It would be great if you could remove the dozen or so outgoing U2U messages to
moderators in the reporter's mailbox when spam is deleted. Then there would be zero downside for the reporter.
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Vogelzang
Banned
Posts: 662
Registered: 26-4-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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Green eggs and spam
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mr.crow
National Hazard
Posts: 884
Registered: 9-9-2009
Location: Canada
Member Is Offline
Mood: 0xFF
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| Quote: Originally posted by Polverone |
You are already on the trusted list of spam reporters. But a second trusted person needs to confirm your report for at least one of those reported
spam messages before the messages and spammer will be removed.
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Thanks! I always browse the forum at work so I catch quite a bit
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble
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12AX7
Post Harlot
Posts: 4803
Registered: 8-3-2005
Location: oscillating
Member Is Offline
Mood: informative
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Excellent work!
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White Yeti
National Hazard
Posts: 816
Registered: 20-7-2011
Location: Asperger's spectrum
Member Is Offline
Mood: delocalized
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Very good work Polverone. There's just one point I'm a little unsure about. We can report the post by sending a link and labelling as 'spam', but can
we also report the user, so that all associated posts are removed? It seems like a quicker solution, as spammers usually post numerous posts at once.
"Ja, Kalzium, das ist alles!" -Otto Loewi
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting for spring
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| Quote: Originally posted by watson.fawkes | | Quote: Originally posted by Polverone | | As an additional bonus for moderators, when you let the spam-killing tool work instead of manually deleting posts, it will also remove related unread
spam reports from your inbox. |
It would be great if you could remove the dozen or so outgoing U2U messages to
moderators in the reporter's mailbox when spam is deleted. Then there would be zero downside for the reporter. |
I think this feature should be working now. Let me know.
| Quote: Originally posted by White Yeti | | Very good work Polverone. There's just one point I'm a little unsure about. We can report the post by sending a link and labelling as 'spam', but can
we also report the user, so that all associated posts are removed? It seems like a quicker solution, as spammers usually post numerous posts at once.
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If one of a user's posts gets confirmed as spam, all of their other posts will be removed before the account is removed, even posts that have not been
explicitly reported.
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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99chemicals
Hazard to Others
Posts: 174
Registered: 24-3-2012
Location: In the Octet
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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I think it works. I just reported one and right after it said this topic does not exist. This could be coincidental as The_Davster is on.
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The_Davster
A pnictogen
Posts: 2861
Registered: 18-11-2003
Member Is Offline
Mood: .
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I did just delete some spam.
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watson.fawkes
International Hazard
Posts: 2793
Registered: 16-8-2008
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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I'll let you know at the next opportunity to check
the new behavior.
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