Thread

During the last few weeks I have noticed an increase of spam post inside the Ellislab forums.  Most of the posters have 5 or less posts in their account (usually they post only once) and they post short topics or reply that have little to do with the discussion.  Sometimes these posts remain for hours and even days, creating unnecessary noise inside our community.  I hope something is done to keep the spammers away and real members coming back.

Ellislab already knows about this, I brought that up before here. Apparently they are too busy doing unproductive things such as writing a trademark use policy to be bothered with something as “trivial” to them as their forums being spammed. They barely visit their own forums anymore anyway, so I guess why should they care?

Oh on a sidenote, to Ellislab and co, why are you writing trademark policies to protect your brand on the outskirts of your website while your brand is being raped by spammers on your own forum? You guys have really got your priorities backwards.

Believe me, we’d much rather be doing things other than writing a Trademark Use Policy. Almost anything else. But it’s a fact of business. We have to protect our trademarks or we lose them.

Incidentally, I think you’ve got the Trademark Use Policy backwards. We didn’t write it to tell people what they couldn’t do with our trademarks. We wrote it to give everyone a quick, consistent reference so they knew how they could use our trademarks without having to write us about it. In the past, everyone would have to write us and get clearance individually. (You can imagine how each one of those requests would also take time and keep us from making great software. Yikes!) In essence, the Trademark Use Policy is simply us saying, “So you want to use our trademarks? Awesome! Here’s how you can do that without any fuss.”

Regarding spam, I know. Gross. It’s a nasty fact of life for websites that allow user input. We’ve got a powerful spam filter in place that blocks the vast majority of it, but some still gets through. From there, we do look through the forums for spam daily, but there’s a huge volume of conversation on the forum, and we’ll inevitably miss some spam. Could I ask you both to do a small thing to help me with it? When you see a spammy post, just report it. There’s a link on each post that looks like this: [ Report ], and using that will let us know about the spam. We look at each and every one of those reports, so you’re help there will go a long way in clearing up the forum.

Thanks!

Hello Kevin

Good luck on updating the business documentation, maybe not the most glamorous job, but someone has to do it!

I have noticed the spam increased after the new website came out.  It could be that I just notice it more since it seems less people are active in the community now.  Maybe getting one or two people (in different time zones) working in cleaning the forums and replying to users will help so key EL people can keep 100% focused on working with the products.

While I understand that EL has moved from providing support on the forums, the forum is still a powerful promotion tool for new users.  And it used to be an invaluable source of information for old members that kept them coming back.  The old camaraderie and community spirit seems to be lost now.

I will be reporting any spam I see from now on, but as member of this forum and a Forum Module user I really wish there were more anti-spam/fake-registration features in the module.

Ok I get that now Kevin, about the trademark policy. I just feel that letting spam run wild on the forum hurts the Ellislab brand but it doesn’t seem to be high priority.

You know what impression it gives? You usually only see that on inactive forums. And especially when you see that on a forum that’s the home of commercial software it’s a really bad sign. When I do research for any CMS I will always check the community/forums as I’m sure many others do also (because that’s the place where you get help)... In the past this was a great strong point here at Ellislab. Now it’s like you step straight into a horror movie. If I would find the forums like this with the spam, no-way I would take this software seriously. After all, if the company doesn’t even take the time to clean it’s forums properly, what does that say about the rest of their activities?

By the way, I’ve seen far smaller forums that are less active but that have no spam. I don’t know why it’s such a big problem at Ellislab, but I feel to any problem there’s a solution if you look for it.

Other members have already proposed some in the other thread:

One solution is to appoint some volunteer moderators from the community itself? I would be willing to help keep an eye on things, I’m sure others would too?

A simple solution is to place the first 2 postings of every new member in a moderation queue. These postings will not be visible in the forum immediately, but only after they are approved by a moderator.

I feel the moderator solution is good, if you don’t have the time yourself, then why not take the help of some active users that are willing to do it for you? I understand this is a trust issue also but I’m sure there are some long time users on the forums that you could trust with that responsibility?

Oh and about reporting, I never did this myself but…

^ This. It’s annoying to report spam and still see it here, sometimes days later.

By the way, I’ve seen far smaller forums that are less active but that have no spam.

Right, but it’s the very high-traffic nature of our site that causes us to be a target for incredibly well-crafted spam attacks. A link to another site from ours comes with a lot of Google juice, so spammers target high-traffic sites like ours, and they don’t attack with the same creativity and relentlessness on less active sites.

I feel the moderator solution is good, if you don’t have the time yourself, then why not take the help of some active users that are willing to do it for you?

Well, to be perfectly honest with you, the first layer of that community-based moderation is folks using that [ Report ] link. I’d really love to see widespread use of the spam-reporting tool before asking volunteers to spend hours combing through our forums looking for spam. That’s a pretty thankless task, and while it seems like a panacea, it actually requires quite a bit of oversight. (Deleting spammy posts and banning accounts really isn’t as black and white as it might seem.) We’ve tried it several times in the past, and it’s just not worked out.

Oh and about reporting, I never did this myself but…

^ This. It’s annoying to report spam and still see it here, sometimes days later.

With all due respect to Dylan, I’m not quite sure what he’s referring to. Since the launch of the new site, we’ve really made a point to jump on all spam reports as soon as possible. Days? Hard to believe. Even on weekends, I find myself processing spam reports.

Could I ask an honest question? You seem to really have a lot of concern about the spam problem (and I completely understand that), but you admit you’ve never even used the spam reporting tool. Why is that? Could I ask that you please give it a try and see how effective it is? With you using that tool and me on the other end making ash piles of those spammy posts, I think we can knock this out.

Could I ask an honest question? You seem to really have a lot of concern about the spam problem (and I completely understand that), but you admit you’ve never even used the spam reporting tool. Why is that? Could I ask that you please give it a try and see how effective it is? With you using that tool and me on the other end making ash piles of those spammy posts, I think we can knock this out.

Because I wasn’t really aware of that option until you just suggested it. My main concern is not the spam though, it’s the whole change at Ellislab recently and what it will mean for the future of Expression engine. The spam is just a small fragment of that. I voiced those concerns here.

I understand what you are saying about the smaller forums and the moderator issue.

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