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[Toady One]

There are on average 5 a day.  Sometimes 1, sometimes as many as 10.  I couldn't read the higher CAPTCHA settings myself, so I'm going to keep it on medium (level 3 of 5).  It's probably mostly humans making the accounts anyway, as people have noted.  It might be easier to bump into the spammers in GD and DF GD (I usually get multiple reports on those), but they show up in all of the sections (a lot at the top board with the DF release announcements).  I guess it's starting to bother people, especially when they come on when we're asleep, but it isn't a huge problem for me in terms of time.  The total cleanup takes maybe 15-20 seconds per spammer, since there isn't really any investigation or thought necessary for the vast majority of them.  The only trouble comes when I have to delete a 100 post thread people have been playing in a bit too much, since that 504s the board for a minute. or when an enterprising spammer jumps in with 20+ posts.

I don't think messing with IPs would help much -- I just checked the last batch of spammers, and they all come from IPs that had never been used before.  I've banned a few blocks of IPs in the past that were being heavily abused, but I'd rather not go to that too much, since we have people interested in B12 all over the world and they can get caught up in IP bans.  There are a few email domains that seem to be spammer-only (psiek.com?), but I don't know much about that and which ones are okay to trash -- many of the spammers come from gmail accounts, for instance, which I clearly can't block.

I don't have a lot of control over nuanced tweaks to the forum, as far as I know.  All I do with spammers is ban them and delete their posts.  Those are heavy moderator powers to hand out -- and if the new moderator didn't have those powers, it would still be the same amount of work for me (and more, because I'd have to manage moderators).


So I'm not sure I have a lot of options.  At the same time, this is not a huge time sink for me.  One trolly/flamey forum spat takes up as much of my time as 50 spammers.  If it's the unsightliness of it rather than a concern about my time, then it would probably be best not to bump spam threads, but I'd hate to make that a rule, since there'd be more people yelling at other people over breaking the rule, rather than the generally harmless goofing around that happens in to-be-deleted threads now.

[Aqizzar]

Thanks for the reply Toady, and all good stuff to hear.  It is more of a general concern than an actual problem, it just seemed to me like they were getting much more numerous lately, and it gets irksome even if the spammers don't cause any real harm.

The only trouble comes when I have to delete a 100 post thread people have been playing in a bit too much, since that 504s the board for a minute.

I was not aware of this.  I'll certainly keep that in mind in the future.

[Jackrabbit]

Swamping the forum? Geez, I'll be sure to avoid them from now on.

[freeformschooler]

Same here. Whoops 

[Vester]

Its not really a bias, no offense to any upper board goers but the lower board guys seem to be a bit more mature. Not saying that the people up there are immature though.

... really?

Almost all trollyflamey incidents happen in the lower boards, you know. That's partly because of the wider scope of things being discussed.

[Zangi]

Eh, think of it this way, lower boards catch a wider array of folks.  Even it it has its core of 'mature' folk.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There isn't really much of what I'd define as a community in the upper boards at all. There are plenty of people in the upper boards, but there's no community sense, just a loose association over Dwarf Fortress.

[Powder Miner]

...Well, there's a little bit of a community sense.
I mean, necro10 and his
MAGMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
There's a little bit, if a bit loose

[nenjin]

I kinda expected the Toad's response. I'd also attribute the higher amount of bots to....ya know....coverage and all. Millions of spammers who never heard of DF before that just got a lead on a big game forum with tons of eyeballs on it every minute of the day.

Anyways, I've always been amazed at the lack of moderators around here, given the size of these forums and the amount of activity. For the longest time I assumed that Cap'n and Footkerchief at least had emergency mod powers to delete posts and mute users or something, via the old admin account.

It's not really an issue to me until someone has cooked up a posting bot that runs unchecked for 5 hours and creates pages worth of threads. Those are the times you need deputy moderators.

[Chaoswizkid]

The only trouble comes when I have to delete a 100 post thread people have been playing in a bit too much, since that 504s the board for a minute. or when an enterprising spammer jumps in with 20+ posts.

I believe you should point that out somewhere more obvious, Toady. I know I've taken part in playing around a spambot thread, but if I knew that it can be a problem, I'd have never started. I also doubt anyone else would either (which means no bumping for those that care about seeing it that often). Maybe in a general announcement about spambots?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The only trouble comes when I have to delete a 100 post thread people have been playing in a bit too much, since that 504s the board for a minute. or when an enterprising spammer jumps in with 20+ posts.

That's what has been causing the 504 errors? That...makes a lot of sense, in retrospect.

[mnjiman]

I feel that the major issues surrounding dwarf fortress could be easily solved if Toady would open himself up to the community a little and start trusting those who deserve it. There are great people in the community willing to give a hand in many aspects of DF. It is sad that these prime opportunities to make the game better is going to waste because of trust issues.

<3 Toady.

[Vester]

I feel that the major issues surrounding dwarf fortress could be easily solved if Toady would open himself up to the community a little and start trusting those who deserve it. There are great people in the community willing to give a hand in many aspects of DF. It is sad that these prime opportunities to make the game better is going to waste because of trust issues.

Let's not bring that up again.

[scriver]

Would it br possible to give these hypotethical boterators just the power to move threads? You could have a separate, unviewable, board to move them to until you and Threetoe can review them yourselves. That way, people wouldn't see them and be annoyed as much, while you two still retain the locking and deleting powers yourself.

The only trouble comes when I have to delete a 100 post thread people have been playing in a bit too much, since that 504s the board for a minute.

I was not aware of this.  I'll certainly keep that in mind in the future.

Yeah... No more botmocking for me, it seems.  I'm gonna miss it a little.

[RedKing]

Erm. Yeah, I guess I'll stop that now, seeing as I'm usually one of the first to play with a spambot thread.