Commercial Links in User Profiles and Signatures.

Problems logging in? Links not working? Graphics missing? 4xx errors? Post any forum problems here.

Moderator: Webmasters

User avatar
Corbin
Zealot
Posts: 158
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2008 09:48 pm
Location: california
Contact:

Re: Commercial Links in User Profiles and Signatures.

Post by Corbin »

Why don't you create a subforum that requires new users to post at least once or something as to "validate" their account? This way maybe you could really root out the bad accounts. Doesn't seem like a bad idea.
User avatar
Willis

Master of the Mask
Lead Programmer

Posts: 872
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2004 09:28 am
Location: Eau Claire, WI USA
Contact:

Re: Commercial Links in User Profiles and Signatures.

Post by Willis »

Because people often ignore simple instructions, and maintaining such a system would end up being more work anyway. I like the solutions that require the changes be a part of the process, not post-process.
User avatar
Corbin
Zealot
Posts: 158
Joined: Sat Aug 16, 2008 09:48 pm
Location: california
Contact:

Re: Commercial Links in User Profiles and Signatures.

Post by Corbin »

Good point. You will have to keep us up to date with whatever solution you come up with. Hopefully you can squash them soon.
User avatar
Tchernobog
Tchernobog's Love Child
Posts: 1402
Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 07:30 am
Location: Rural Alberta, Canada
Contact:

Re: Commercial Links in User Profiles and Signatures.

Post by Tchernobog »

To a certain extent the final line of defence against spam is always going to have to be the administrator himself dealing with it manually. While certain measures (such as the ones Willis has proposed and implemented himself so far) can help, one must be careful as they can encumber legitimate users (like DRM, huh?) and simply be bypassed by the spammer in question, either by them doing the deed themselves manually or by building smarter and brighter bots. As such the final step in the end often is to simply delete their posts and their accounts after the fact.

For the most part that is the strategy I have been following in dealing with the spam bots at the Blood Wiki. I have protected a few pages in cases of assault, and banned fairly obvious spammers when they keep using the same I.P Addresses, but for the most part I just end up clearing up the mess after the fact. We are fortunate that at the moment they do not seem to be attacking content pages, and are mostly just attacking certain talk pages or random ones such as "Index.php". I do not protect these pages, as I have seen in the past that if your protect a page they will often jump onto another one, and since the ones they are currently afflicting are of no or at least very minor importance, I would rather they kept their focus on those instead of hopping to more important articles. I also find the idea of protecting a talk page somewhat perverse, as it seems to me to kind of defeat the point of having them.

In the end this is not that much of a chore, and even on my awful internet connection it only takes a few minutes, unless Wiki-Site is acting screwy again, in which case just doing anything on the site can be an arduous task. But, especially in the case of the Transfusion Forums where we have stable and reliable hosting thanks to Willis, in the end the best solution might just be to find someone to act as a "spam cop", and just delete the posts when they encounter them. As I visit the forum more than once a day, I myself would not mind taking up such duties if Willis would be willing to trust me with certain administrator powers. This is by no means a suggestion to abandon attempts to automate the process, I just thought I should put down my two cents on the issue here. It is a sad conceit though that such discussions should be necessary, however. Bloody spam. :banghead:
Post Reply