SPAM Solution!!!

[Larry K]

IMO, the above discussions/ideas don't "solve" the spam problem....

all ideas are once spam has already been posted.

I don't have the "solution" -- yet
BUT, I would like to prevent spam, flames, crap post from ever being posted in the first place.

 

[Chankama]

Well Larry. That's the Holy Grail of the email spam problem .. But I think it's actually easier for you guys since you have more intimate user statistics (registered date, post count, etc.)..

You can integrate a spam recognition engine into your system OR you could build one. But this would require you to experiment with various types of classifiers.

Or you could make a Rule Based system. Where one of the rules could be no external links (non-TF) until a person has >100 posts and have been registered for more than 2 weeks. This is somewhat annoying for people who have legitimate questions and want to post a picture of their system. But you can't win all battles.

False positives will discourage people from coming here. Honestly, I think the best way is to get the other members involved if possible. You can "do" a preventive system. But it will cost you money or it will cost your time to build one . Or you can simply try a Rule Based preventive system. If you can detect "obvious" spam, that's still something - even if some stuff passes through

 

[Apokalipse]

Yeh, the flagging is a good idea. It's kind of a democracy here, right? Should be anyway, so if a large number of members have the same feeling about a thread (say, for example, a bunch reported it) it could be closed and a message sent to the mod(s) to look it over and decide if it is spam or not. Or there could be a vote type button on it, only it is a spam button, and after so many times people pressing it the thread becomes temporaril closed. Although, we would have to take into consideration the jerks that would go around closing threads here and there just for the hell of it.

I like that Idea, maybe we could extend on that. we can add a feature to flag SPAM. 1 to 3 flags would notify all the users (like having an icon next to it), 4 or more gets it hidden - the forum would have display that shows if there are hidden threads, and how many, and 10 or more flags gets it locked and hidden, then when a mod gets there they can decide whether to unlock it
with the hidden threads, they would be viewed by clicking a button at the top or side of the forum, then they can hide them again if they wish
or if it's just posts in a thread, the posts get flagged and hidden the same way, with a link to view them at the top or where the post is (just one line saying "[user name]'s post has been hidden, click here to view it")

and if a particular user gets 3 or more threads hidden/locked in one day, they get banned, and the super mods are notified, and they decide whether to make their account active again.

 

[SHAWN]

Great ideas IMO guys