Thread

No-body cares enough to implement an anti spam solution?

Or even check the forum for piles of spam…

Little ridiculous that the first four pages in this subforum are nothing but spam ...

When I’m looking at a program, the first thing I do after looking at the features is check the forums to see what users have to say about the product or what issues I could expect to face. This would make me move on.

The giant blast by a single account doesn’t happen that often; that’s a bit ridiculous no matter what. But yeah, EllisLab says there are anti-spam measures in place, but it does seem to be far more commonplace than others. Not really sure what the issue is.

I agree, it’s annoying. Honestly, the issue is that spammers are really stinkin’ smart, and they’ve got a lot of incentive to be really good at breaking through existing spam prevention techniques. While we block hundreds and hundreds of spammy attempts every day, unfortunately there are still a few that get through. EllisLab.com is a quite a popular website, so it makes for a very attractive target for spammers looking to boost their search engine rankings.

With spam prevention, it’s never a once-and-done thing. The spammers are constantly working to find ways around our prevention efforts, and we’re constantly working to counteract their schemes. We have to be careful about this though: we could come up with solution to block forum spam with near 100% accuracy, but the rate of false positives would be incredibly high. Is it worth that? I’d say not. It’s quite a technological, algorithmic dance.

We have several layers of spam prevention in place on the forum, and as I said, we’re always working to make that better. Here’s how you can help: If you see spam that somehow made it past the gate, click Report above that post. That lets us know about it so we can remove it and study it for ways to prevent that kind of spam in the future.

Thanks!

With all due respect, Kevin, there are currently 17 full pages of nothing but spam that’s been there between 5 and 12 hours.

I understand the complexity of dealing with it and I’m aware that popular forums are a target. But 12 hours without anybody seeing or doing anything to remove it?

I know you guys don’t do forum support, but the forums are still part of your business. Someone should be checking it on a regular basis.

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.
If you have approved the first 2 postings of a new member, he is considered to be legitimite user. Then the moderation queue is not applicable anymore.

I use this on my (non EE) forum. It doesn’t stop spammers from making postings, but these postings aren’t visible in the forum!

Another 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?

I must admit I am quite sad to see how much the forum has been culled, and the wiki vanishing is another downer. If there is anything I can do to help keep the forums a useful place for beginners and experienced EE/MM/CI folk alike I would be more than willing. The (non-official) stackexchange site is great, but it’s better suited to the more direct and specific questions rather than discussion. I think a forum is a vital community tool for any company like EllisLab so can we try and get it back in community hands and useful???

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