What’s with all the spam lately?
What spam?
~Jordan
There was spam, but it got deleted quickly. There has been a noticeable uptick in spam posts over the last week or so (particularly Russian), but most folks don’t notice unless they check in frequently since it gets disappeared quickly.
That is why it is generally not useful to post a reply to a spam message or thread, since it will either get deleted with the spam, or be left hanging out by itself.
Replying with an “I’ve reported this spam” post just makes more cleanup work for the site admins. It is best to silently report the spam and it will go away. There is no harm in having multiple people report the same post.
Cheers,
- Dean
Ahh, alright thanks. Yes I’ve been busy the past few days and haven’t had much time to check the forum, unfortunately. But anyway glad to hear it’s being taken care of quickly.
~Jordan
Several years ago, other countries developed programming code that will decipher the 'recaptcha", AND reply to the email verification. Once a Vbulletin forum is on the ‘list’, more and more spammers will be evident.
Fortunately,there seem to be enough moderators on this forum to delete the spam entries rather fast.
I have seen many come and go quite quickly on this forum.
Ann
ive noticed them too, but they were just annoying, nothing too destructive…
The main benefit to doing this is to prevent several people from reporting the same spam.
I agree with Quazar, it ends up being more work for the Admins to figure out what to do with the loner post saying “spam”, and I would assume that simply reporting the spam would get a quicker response, as if they are reading your post then they most likely would have already seen the spam. I see no harm in more than one person reporting one spam post.
~Jordan
What we do after reporting spam would probably be a matter of opinion/preference on the admin’s side, so why don’t we just ask them?
Admins: Would you like us to post “^Spam reported” after reporting a post?
i thought the forum system was the more “reports” a post gets, the higher on the “spam” list it gets
“mod spam list” mind you
Murdomeek,
Report a post and an infraction are two very different features in a different versions of this forum software. It’s been a long time since I had someone ‘report a post’ on my forum, but from what I recall, as an admin, I simply got an email message with the member’s explanation of why he/she is reporting it, found the post and deleted it, banning the user’s ip address as well (but they have ways of getting around that).
It is my understanding that the ‘infractions’ feature lets you set up an incremental counter, and depending on the counter value, certain restraints can be placed on that member’s usage, such as not being able to use private messages, not being able to reply or create a thread, etc., etc…
From what I have seen, the problem here is not that bad. Once it starts being bad, it is truly a headache and difficult to manage. I finally decided to restrict new membership to moderation control. Even that is a pain because it is difficult by user names and ip addresses to determine if it is a spammer.
I finally upgraded my forum software, implemented a simple question (math) and that has significantly reduced the amount of spam traffic. The upgrade also allowed me an easy way to delete 1,000’s of new members awaiting moderation.
Unfortunately, I still moderate new membership. I simply do not have to weed through so many new user requests.
In my humble opinion, someone posting that they have reported a spam post will prevent others from doing so and overloading the admin with multiple spam report emails. The admin or moderator can delete the ‘reported’ message and all is clean.
Does that make sense?
Ann
The Spam Reports are not to overwhelming, but I personally like this idea…
Post your Spam Reported message as a Response to the Spam Post… When the Spam is deleted, the Spam Reported post will be as well… And those who never saw the Spam, will not know the difference…
This is some General Information, for those who care to “know more”…
Those Spam User will just come back as a Different Login Name… Luckily, Vbulletin has some real nice features, that the Average User, will never notice, but if they were not there, the Average User would definitely notice the Lack of them…
(I am not a Vbulletin Expert)
The Vex Forum is setup so that new Users, (IIRC in their First 10 Posts) are Automatically Moderated for posts with Hyper-Links in the Body of the Message. Which means that if they post a Hyper-Link to Robot Magazine or where to buy Cheep iPods, the message is Set Moderated so that only Moderators and Admins can even see that it is posted, all regular users see nothing… Unfortunately, Hyper-Links in the Signature are not covered by this protection, also, URL’s, not in Hyper-Links are not either, so “stuff” does get through…
Spam Users are up tremendously in the last 3-4 weeks… Normally I see One or Two Spam Messages on the entire Vex Forum per week, now it is occurring at the rate of One or Two Spam Messages per Hour… I know that on VaxFan, the same thing is occurring… This appears to be a much larger problem than just the Vex Forum…
Keep Reporting Spam, and it will be Removed… 
Thread revival!
@Mods: Did something go wrong with Vbulletin, or have spam bots just gotten a lot smarter recently?
Also–What would you like us to do with regards to “reporting” posts? Is just once per user enough, or should we report all of a user’s posts? Or, should we post once per “wave” of attack, and assume you look at all the recent posts?
Because of the increase in New User Registrations because of the VEX Design Challenges, the Powers that Be, turned off New Registration moderation…
Those of us blessed with Moderator Super Powers, are keeping busy…
Unfortunately, you don’t know if your the First Person to Report a SPAM Message, or the Fifth… Just Report, and we will figure it out…
Maybe a cool add on, or something like the Vbulletin Ranking System could be used to indicate if a Post has been reported as Questionable…
Also… I am OK with One report per “SPAM User Account”… Other may disagree…
Here is what I do…
If you look at the Statistic Tab, under a users Profile, you can find “all” posts by a User. “all” is a relative term, because, it definitely won’t fine ALL of my Posts… I can get the Last 500 Posts I made.
Vbulletin will display the first few lines of each Post, 25 to a page, so that the Content can be reviewed.
Vbulletin also has a Group Check Box that lets you check ALL of the Posts on a Page, so removing 15 Posts at One Time is not an Issue…
You really should do what someone suggested and give senior members the ability to delete users with less than 3 posts… thus lessening your job…
That is a terrible idea?
If someone deserves to have the power to delete a post, then they should be a mod. If they shouldn’t be a mod, then they shouldn’t be allowed to delete posts.
I personally think that the Moderator Coverage is adequate, in most cases… This time of year is an exception…
Luckily, all the SPAM I have deleted in the last few days is trying to sell you something you won’t be interested in… In the past, there have been some very Un-Family Friendly posts…
Keep up the Reporting…
Just curious, who is “blessed” (however, during this time of year, it may be a curse ;)) with moderator powers?