Need Moderators!!!

[SeanF]

Every day, we get 20-150+ new spammer accounts. Every day. We need more stringent rules for registration, and/or moderators with the admin privileges to nuke spammer accounts.

We've got 70 new spammer accounts so far today, and it's just after 9AM (local time)!

[SeanF]

They are posting, but their initial posts/topics must be approved before they appear on the forum. So when I log in & go to the mod control panel, I see "40 posts waiting for approval" and get to sift through them and either approve or nuke them. So far today there have been just over 500 messages to deal with, handled by the other mods and me. Usually it's easy to tell by the subject line that they are spam messages, but some look legit and require investigation.

There were 160 new spammer accounts created today. I predict by end of day there will be a couple hundred more messages for the mods to approve or nuke. In addition to being an unnecessary waste of time for the volunteer mods, it can't be good for the health of the backend database. And threads like this taking up bandwidth.

Thanks for the links. The only person here who can do anything about it is Steve.

Sean

[chev49]

only 252 to clear when i started this am...

[chev49]

and more stringent rules to post of course...

[travelinwithus]

I am guessing because I didn't actually keep track but I probably nuked 400 spam posts today.

[GreyEagle]

I laid out today..... little under the weather plus a 43rd anniversary

thanks for picking up my slack

[Steve]

I made some changes and cleaned things up, should be better for a while. I'll try to keep an eye on it. I just got internet now at my house again on friday since going without it for about eight months.

[GreyEagle]

Thanks Steve....

[SeanF]

Originally Posted by Part-time

I wouldn't mind helping you guys boot spammers of here...

It would be nice if we (moderators) could boot spammers off of the site. As it is, we only get to clean up the mess. The mess being automated posts full of jibberish and links to Chinese knockoffs of designer items. When it comes to spam, everything is automated, from account registration to post creation. New registrants have their posts put in a queue to be approved (or not) by a mod. There are 2500-5000 new posts every day, waiting for approval. The mods get to sift through them and pick out the ones that are legit, and disapprove the rest. I think there are maybe one or two legit posts per day, but there could be fewer. It is possible that we occasionally mistake legit posts for spam, which is a shame. But reading spam posts/topics can make you cross-eyed pretty quickly.

More moderators would be great, but IMO a better solution would be to implement a few changes to make it more difficult for the spammers to register and post. Simply banning registrants and posts from Chinese IP addresses would help. Improving the registration process with more intelligent challenge questions, even Captcha (which I find annoying, but it is apparently effective), would be a help. But none of the moderators can do any of those things.

Thanks for volunteering. I hope you get the promotion!

Best,
Sean

[GreyEagle]

Originally Posted by SeanF

It would be nice if we (moderators) could boot spammers off of the site. As it is, we only get to clean up the mess. The mess being automated posts full of jibberish and links to Chinese knockoffs of designer items. When it comes to spam, everything is automated, from account registration to post creation. New registrants have their posts put in a queue to be approved (or not) by a mod. There are 2500-5000 new posts every day, waiting for approval. The mods get to sift through them and pick out the ones that are legit, and disapprove the rest. I think there are maybe one or two legit posts per day, but there could be fewer. It is possible that we occasionally mistake legit posts for spam, which is a shame. But reading spam posts/topics can make you cross-eyed pretty quickly.

More moderators would be great, but IMO a better solution would be to implement a few changes to make it more difficult for the spammers to register and post. Simply banning registrants and posts from Chinese IP addresses would help. Improving the registration process with more intelligent challenge questions, even Captcha (which I find annoying, but it is apparently effective), would be a help. But none of the moderators can do any of those things.

Thanks for volunteering. I hope you get the promotion!

Best,
Sean

"AMEN"

[GreyEagle]

Originally Posted by Part-time

Well I'm willing to help out in any way I can.

Thanks, but it"s Steve the administrator, who can make the biggest difference.........

Sometimes I wonder if he is still around? never see him online, or hear from him.....
sure hope all is ok?
Last time Steve purged the system we had appx 4500 members. today we have over 16,000...
Total members 16207 and growing........ 99% new spam members