This thread for followup to my PM to (initially) admin users:
"Hi guys
Rafe's said it's OK to PM you all - as you may have noticed, there's been a lot of spam attack on the AAS forums recently. It's a lot of work going in and banning each spammer (click on 'warn', then increase the warning level to 10 and ban them permanently) and then deleting each thread - or at least it's a lot of work for one or two people. But if we all pitch in, then it should be a walk in the park.
I've noticed that many of you do delete spam threads when you notice them, but don't ban the user, meaning that they can post again. Would you mind (if you have the time) doing the banning as well as the thread deleting?
Thanks very much. Comments welcome, of course.
Steve Litchfield (pp Rafe, who's jetting off to the USA - again!)"
Yep I've been banning users for a while.
Just one thing when deletin threads does anyone have an opion wheather its better to completely remove them or leave a deleted message?
In the short term, I've been leaving a 'deleted' message, if only to show Rafe the extent of the problem. In the medium term, he's going to implement something more rigorous to stop spam (somehow) and then we can completely zap the messages which get through 8-)
Steve
Banning the users is definitely the way forward. I've used this approach on Mobile Themes for a few months and spam posts are virtually zero now.
I ban when I remember - I just wish vBulletin had a one-touch ban button like you can implement in some other forums...sometimes I'm too busy to ban everyone I see spamming
Thanks all. The next question is, how do we coordinate efforts such that we don't all go in to try and zap every spam, duplicating effort?
Can I suggest that we each take a day of the week and make a mental note that, when notified, it's our turn to go and delete and ban?
Thoughts? Volunteers?
Steve
stuclark wrote:I ban when I remember - I just wish vBulletin had a one-touch ban button like you can implement in some other forums...sometimes I'm too busy to ban everyone I see spamming
I agree with this. Back in the day when the forum was run on phpBB, I remember we had a traffic-light system, whereby with one click you could ban (red button) or warn (yellow button) users. The number of warnings would be shown under the name of the user, and if s/he got 3 warnings, the user would be banned.
A similar system ("Infractions"😉 has been introduced in vBulletin 3.6.x. Would it be possible to upgrade the AAS forums to this version at some point? It'd make life much easier regarding banning the spammers.
Most of the spam on AAS is 100% blatant though - posts that require immediate banning, if only to force the person into going through the sign-up again under a different name. Rafe, can we have a deliberately longer signup sequence, so the spammers get bored and go for an easier site? 8-)
Steve
It's a shame, but most of my actions in the forum over the last months consist of banning spammers and deleting their posts.
I do NOT have the feeling that banning helps, since a lot of spammers only register, post their spam and never come back. If they want to post more spam, they simply reregister with a different nickname and post spam again. IP banning would be more useful, but with that you run the risk of banning legitimate users as well.
One additional note: I very often see that a single post has been deleted and the offender has been banned, but that there are still several other spam posts from the same user. What I usually do is open a spam post, ban the user through the warning system and then when I come back to the post, click the user name and select "Find all posts by ...". You can then delete all the spam posts in one go.
Oh yes, just in case the spammers come back, I usually fill in the reason for banning with something like: "Advertisement spamming - your ISP has been notified" 😊
Great tip, Arjen, and thanks all for your continuing efforts.
Rafe and I work hard too, we've upgraded the server to one that's got several times more capacity and we've got the resources to keep pumping new content into the editorial system. My personal goal is to do my bit to make AAS the best darned smartphone site in the world. 10 years ago, my 3-Lib site was the best Psion site in the world, but in these days of high bandwidth, forums, SQL etc. I'm hopelessly lost and am happy to leave this side of things to Rafe.
8-)
Steve