Lately there is a lot of spam (or perhaps i notice it more because it hits threads i subscribed). There are two ways it plays out: Either i find out about novel ways to level in games i never played, or MicroUgly was his usual prompt self and deleted the post already, so in the supposedly newly-posted-to thread i only find - nothing.
I never hosted a forum, so i have no idea how easy it would be to accomplish one of two possible solutions:

* The mail informing me could give me the first 5 lines or so of the new post, which is mostly enough to spot spam.
* Some of the spam is so bad it might be a bot - so captchas might work - I hate them as much as the next person, but there is a version that at least has some good angles to it :ReCaptcha- the captchas are words from a digitalization initiative, that the OCR could not cope with. By solving the captcha, you help digitize Books! Yay! (It still sucks, but with a nicer aftertaste

Where would you put it? While submitting a post?

I don't like reCaptcha cos I rarely manage to read what it says, sometimes it takes 3 times till I get it right. I like the math and text features of Captcha though, like 6+1 or choosing a third word in a sentence.

...or MicroUgly was his usual prompt self and deleted the post already, so in the supposedly newly-posted-to thread i only find - nothing.

Yeah, how DOES he do that?!
I can't read this thread and not commend micro for his most excellent administration. Plus there are the 2 mods, heathenx and Simarilius, whom I think can delete spam as well. I don't know if they can receive the spam alerts though?

loonquawl, I wonder if you could create some rules in your inbox to handle this type of thing? I've only used Outlook Express, so I don't know about other mail managers, but in OE one can create quite complex rules. I've found it to be quite a flexible, yet comprehensive system. Even if you don't want to delete messages without seeing them 1st, you can send all the suspects to another folder, and screen them later.

Yeah, spam is a pain, but I don't think there exists a good tool which allows forums to "fight back".

There's is already a captcha for when you create an account, and when you post as an un-registered user you also have to complete a captcha.

The thing is, the captchas used on phpBB haven't been cracked by bots yet. The spam we get are from real people, paid to tawl sites like this and post on them.

The only way to stop them is if a central list of banned e-mail addresses is created that all forum operators can refer to and update. I think theres a project in development to do just this for phpBB.

... Then perhaps the five-lines-of-post solution?


"You are receiving this notification because [...] The post starts:
>> HO, ever tried Ghonnorhea? it is fun and easy |Link| get UR STD today!! !! [...] <<
If you want to view the entire post, click [...]


That would be quite convenient

brynn wrote:

...or MicroUgly was his usual prompt self and deleted the post already, so in the supposedly newly-posted-to thread i only find - nothing.

Yeah, how DOES he do that?!
I can't read this thread and not commend micro for his most excellent administration. Plus there are the 2 mods, heathenx and Simarilius, whom I think can delete spam as well. I don't know if they can receive the spam alerts though?

If it was the runescape guy on friday then I got him, didnt get any notifications, just spotted his rubbish in one of the posts I was reading, then did a search on his username and deleted all his posts. He was pretty enthusiastic, had hit about 14 threads. He was actually still posting when I first started deleting, so I reckon some of them lasted a matter of seconds

Simarilius wrote:[If it was the runescape guy on friday then I got him, didnt get any notifications, just spotted his rubbish in one of the posts I was reading, then did a search on his username and deleted all his posts. He was pretty enthusiastic, had hit about 14 threads. He was actually still posting when I first started deleting, so I reckon some of them lasted a matter of seconds

Yeah, accounts like that don't need a warning. I'm sorry I can't give you easier access to delete those posts. As an admin I'm able to delete the account and all posts instantly but I don't think moderators can be given that ability.

microUgly wrote:

Simarilius wrote:[If it was the runescape guy on friday then I got him, didnt get any notifications, just spotted his rubbish in one of the posts I was reading, then did a search on his username and deleted all his posts. He was pretty enthusiastic, had hit about 14 threads. He was actually still posting when I first started deleting, so I reckon some of them lasted a matter of seconds

Yeah, accounts like that don't need a warning. I'm sorry I can't give you easier access to delete those posts. As an admin I'm able to delete the account and all posts instantly but I don't think moderators can be given that ability.

Not a big deal mate, thats one of the advantages of tabs in a browser, just fire up one for every post, then hit delete lots
Was the first time I've done that, gone to ban the account and found he'd posted more !