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[Darvi]

In retrospect, abusing that one spamthread as a suggestion game seems like a very stupid idea. On the other hand, five new ones in one of the subforums, and afaik nobody posted in them. Yay?

[Neonivek]

We could hit them in the pattern

Such as the fact that almost all of them hyperlink a website and almost always on the bottom.

It doesn't help that the forum itself aids spammers. Posting in their topics and clicking their links (clicking their links is the point of them spamming in the first place).

[Bauglir]

Wait, people click the links? Really? Wow.

[RedKing]

I don't think people click the links. And posting in the threads doesn't really benefit anybody (other than people having a good laugh...but that's not worth 504'ing the entire forums for)

[kaijyuu]

Wait, people click the links? Really? Wow.

Obviously some people do else it wouldn't be worthwhile to spam forums with bots.

[RedKing]

Wait, people click the links? Really? Wow.

Obviously some people do else it wouldn't be worthwhile to spam forums with bots.

I think you're overestimating how much thought spammers put into their trade. They don't sit up at night cherry-picking their targets based on marketing to interests or based on response levels. That's what makes them spammers and not just really annoying marketers.

[antymattar]

Well.... there is an alternative... 

You know how the spambots are actually advertising something... we could make spambots that troll the sites that they are advertising. fight fire with fire no?

[Ultimuh]

Well.... there is an alternative... 

You know how the spambots are actually advertising something... we could make spambots that troll the sites that they are advertising. fight fire with fire no?

Uhm.. no..

[Aklyon]

Well.... there is an alternative... 

You know how the spambots are actually advertising something... we could make spambots that troll the sites that they are advertising. fight fire with fire no?

They would need to be completely not at all associated with B12Forums to do that, if you were going to try.

[Bohandas]

Well.... there is an alternative... 

You know how the spambots are actually advertising something... we could make spambots that troll the sites that they are advertising. fight fire with fire no?

That's a good idea if there's any way to actually post things on said sites.

[scriver]

That would not be a good idea even if there was a way to spam their sites.

[Raging Mouse]

From what little spam theory I've picked up, the main attractiveness of spam is the ease with which it is successful. From the point of the spammer, the main part of success is exposure; I've often seen a spam thread on these forums with no replies but with over a hundred views before it's gone. That's already a success for the spammer. If even 0.1% of the views generate a click-through, then about every tenth spam message, assuming 100 views per spam, is generating income of some kind. Further, deleting accounts and ip-banning is easy to sidestep, as mentioned earlier in this thread.

To fight back, you need to make the spammers work harder for their viewcount, and slow down the rate at which they can create new forum ID:s.

The easiest way I can think of to sabotage the viewcount statistic is to let the viewers react. There is already a "report to moderator" button. How about adding a checkbox for spam to the page you are taken to upon clicking said button? If enough people , let's say five, report a post and check the spam box, then the forum would automatically hide the post (or thread if first post, or if all the posts were marked as spam), and possibly even prevent any further posts by that ID until the matter is investigated. A variation of this would be some kind of reddit-like upvote/downvote system with personally adjustable tresholds. Neither is foolproof, of course; they are open to abuse by spammers too, by spam-reporting innocent treads and thereby taking up the moderators' time restoring them, but I hope a simple check of IP:s would reveal the crudest attacks of this kind, and a (silent) rule requiring a forum ID to have had no posts flagged as spam within the last week before said ID's own spam reports are counted -for example- would further reduce the dangers.

Making generating new spam ID:s harder inevitably means messing with the registering process. I don't know the current process, so I am at a disadvantage, and I am also too lazy to clear my cookies and find out. On a purely theoretical note the longer it takes to register, the bigger a hassle it is, for genuine forumites too, of course, but whereas true bay12:ers register (usually) only once, whatever person or whichever persons doing the spam ID:s must register again each time their previous accounts get banned -so the inconvenience for them is multiplied.

In summary, I firmly believe that delaying the registering process and allowing forumites to actively partake in the fight against spam would hopefully greatly inconvenience the spammers without increasing the burden on administrators.

[i2amroy]

Of the several ideas that have shown up here the one that I most like was the idea that after a post (or a new topic) has a certain number of "report this post to moderator" clicks that it becomes invisible to the general public until the moderator either re-approves it or deletes it. In that way spambot threads could be removed instantly by a small handful of users but don't need to actually be deleted until Toady or Threetoe can get around to it. Also if it required several different users to all report it before it went invisible then it would stop one person from just reporting every post in a topic in order to get it removed (I also like the idea of not counting a person's spam votes if they have mis-reported a post recently). Finally because the posts wouldn't actually be deleted, it would allow for potential re-activation of misreported posts as soon as they can be reviewed.

Also I would like to cast my vote towards the removal of accounts that have lurked without ever actually having a first post. Since having an account doesn't entitle user to anything extra other than the ability to post, it makes sense to remove these old accounts after a few months or so and free up some more server space. After a person posted then it would release them from the countdown to deletion so they wouldn't need to worry about actual accounts being deleted.

[Chaoswizkid]

I think the main issue here is, and always will be, that ToadyOne and ThreeToe will be the only mods (There are a couple exceptions, but they are special cases). I've heard Toady talk about it, and it's actually a good thing. He doesn't have to manage moderators, there's no forum politics, no one even has to begin to worry about checks and balances. That's the other big thing. Any delegation of power has to have some sort of checks and balances to ensure there isn't going to be abuse. I think we can all nominate a handful of people that we're absolutely sure wouldn't abuse their power, but that isn't the point. The checks and balances would still have to exist just to be fair, and then it'll be a headache for Toady.

I think, actually, that the best idea would just tweak a function that's already in place. After a set number of "Report to Moderator" clicks, a tag appears on the thread.

This would be pretty seamless, I believe. First, reporting to moderator doesn't automatically do anything. The userbase isn't spontaneously deleting threads or locking them without Toady's oversight. It also protects against a group of people who just disagree with an OP (if the case were deletion or locking instead). Toady doesn't have to look over new accounts, approve new posts, etc. The community is also helping, which has always been a driving factor for calling for more mods, but it can be accomplished without mods.

This would also be beneficial in that, even if the 'report to moderator' button were spammed, Toady can just ban the spammer and we have one less delinquent running amok. Even in situations where there is a very heated debate and it dissolves into personal arguments, the flag can also deter people from joining the debate (since the trend is for the thread to be locked, and people would probably not want to waste their time).

Once Toady has reviewed the issue, he can erase the tag if there's no problem with it. I'm not actually sure how difficult this would be, but I imagine it to be something pretty useful. No delegation of power, deters views from spam threads, the community is helping out, etc.


That said, from what I gather, it's not really a necessary measure. Getting rid of spammers doesn't affect Toady that much, and the above measures would only help out trying to defeat the source of the problem (That spamthreads on Bay12 generate views) with no guarantees. I just wanted to propose it since I think it's a neat idea and we've already talked about delegation of power multiple times (that I've seen, and I'm a lurker compared to a lot of people on these boards).

[Fenrir]

Dwarf Fortress is his life's work, not this forum, so I expect that, if the forum became especially disorderly, Mr. Adams would decommission it entirely, and I would think that the best solution. There are other ways to receive bug reports and feature requests.