Spam - a question/suggestion


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There's been an awful lot of spammers hitting the site lately (well, moreso than usual), both in the forums and in front page comments.  Just out of curiosity, how come there isn't some sort of antispam mechanism in place?  I'm not griping, the moderators typically do a pretty good job at cleaning it up, but it seems like it could be made easier/faster.  Just an example, say the first 10 posts/comments a person makes has to pass the antispam check; if it's questionable the system holds it in a moderation queue until it's been cleared.  Add a few "shoot on sight" keywords, like bow6.com or exit35.com for example, they're popular lately.. under 10 posts and the forum sees that particular keyboard, it can suspend the account automatically until a moderator can nuke or allow it.  After that initial 10 posts it can go on as normal so the moderating staff doesn't get a boatload of extra moderation work.

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I don't speak for Neowin but I generally hate those "first 10 posts can't post links" sites. Lots of times I sign up generally to post an answer to a question with links or something. If I can't post links I'll generally say screw it. Surely I could post without the HTTP but yeah, it's just annoying to me.

 

Also there are plenty of sites that are banned from being post. Obviously to sign up you have to verify also so if spammers are taking the time  to do all that it's not automated systems which would make most of our attempts at anti-spam fruitless if a human spammer is doing the spamming.

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Believe me our spam filters work, we've had them for over a year and we have now moved over to IPB's built in solution (also using Project HoneyPot and Stop Forum Spam db)

 

post-2-0-36246600-1372231357.png

 

Even the best of spam filters isn't going to catch everyone, they are constantly working to get around the filters. By looking at the graph, it seems we've blocked hundreds already and the numbers are already starting to decrease, so post upgrade was a bit of a mad period due to the switch over to a different spam service, but it is definitely working.

 

Plus as SHoTTa25 pointed out, I would hate it if I came here looking to get a problem solved and had to wait for moderator approval, or ten replies before I could start a topic etc, it ruins the whole point of this site :p

 

Edit: Flag as spammer link in hovercards and profiles means it's a one click solution to ban/unapprove all posts and news comments, it's not all that much work for us, even if bloody annoying to have to deal with spammers :p

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Slightly relevant - is there a way a report status posts (other than firing an explicit PM to some mod) that I've been unable to find?

 

For example, currently there's this fellow:

post-382760-0-37565900-1372537105.png

 

It is very rare sight to see such crap, true. There's one more reason, though. While status texts generally aren't contributing much to anything which is totally fine by me, there are those Twit and Effbook cross-posts that don't even make any sense without context, are in languages other than site's de facto English and such. Shouldn't they be somehow... limited?

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Every time I've reported spam it's gone within 10 minutes. I know it's annoying but I personally feel Neowin's staff do a pretty good job of removing spam as it is. With the volume of use Neowin has post approval just doesn't strike me as a practical option.

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