Why Do Spammers Like This Forum So Much?

[Vicegrip]

@jrenaut 167496 wrote:

We’re also two versions behind on version 4, and version 5 came out in 2013. So likely current spam fighting techniques haven’t been getting added to our forum in at least 3-4 years. A lot has changed in that time. Losing Tim Kelley, one of the most active admins (as far as I could tell) also likely hurt. Don’t think this is very high priority that the people writing checks care a lot about.

i keep waiting for someone to come out with forum software that’s actually a reimagination of this rather than incremental upgrades on what we’ve been using since pretty much the dawn of the internet.

The spammers are getting a bit thick. I am a member if a local self funded car forum that is not attached to any brand or group. We have a group of the long time members that form a board and are given some admin functions such as pulling up the spam weeds and deleting the spammers account. Many hands makes for light work. The admin does all the technical work and the helpers do the field work. Perhaps a mix of update the software and add a few helpers.

[cvcalhoun]

@Vicegrip 167497 wrote:

The spammers are getting a bit thick. I am a member if a local self funded car forum that is not attached to any brand or group. We have a group of the long time members that form a board and are given some admin functions such as pulling up the spam weeds and deleting the spammers account. Many hands makes for light work. The admin does all the technical work and the helpers do the field work. Perhaps a mix of update the software and add a few helpers.

Yep, current version allows for Google reCAPTCHA, honeypot, and Akismet. If you activate all three, you can pretty much eliminate spam. But not updating for four years is rather an issue, since spammers have become a lot more resourceful in that time.

[jabberwocky]

Who is the mod team here? I know Tim was the admin for a long time, but I don’t know that he visits anymore. Maybe the forum needs to appoint a few junior mods to help smack the spammer moles down.

[Starduster]

@jabberwocky 167510 wrote:

Who is the mod team here? I know Tim was the admin for a long time, but I don’t know that he visits anymore. Maybe the forum needs to appoint a few junior mods to help smack the spammer moles down.

There are MANY to smack down. The “Your Latest Bike Project” thread, just by itself, is overrun with them.

[hozn]

I haven’t looked at the details here, but I suspect the accounts are created by humans, so robot protection there won’t do a lot of good. Requiring recaptcha for posts could work … Except that probably breaks Tapatalk.

There needs to be more stringent vetting of applications, to include all the bot protections (just in case), but also probably quarantine period (e.g. where there posts have to be individually approved), etc. And then some sort of spam content filtering on posting would be good. I don’t know how much if that this forum software supports. But whatever is being used now clearly isn’t working.

Some of the spam is really well done, though, so as to be hard to distinguish from real content.

[Vicegrip]

@hozn 167527 wrote:

I haven’t looked at the details here, but I suspect the accounts are created by humans, so robot protection there won’t do a lot of good. Requiring recaptcha for posts could work … Except that probably breaks Tapatalk.

There needs to be more stringent vetting of applications, to include all the bot protections (just in case), but also probably quarantine period (e.g. where there posts have to be individually approved), etc. And then some sort of spam content filtering on posting would be good. I don’t know how much if that this forum software supports. But whatever is being used now clearly isn’t working.

Some of the spam is really well done, though, so as to be hard to distinguish from real content.

One of them got me to waste some time and answer a question it asked. 😡

Can it be set so any post with a link in it has to be approved by a human unless posted by a long term member? Say less than 50 or XX posts you need approval for any posts with hot link. Also set up a volunteer team of Spam Hunters. Four or five frequent visitors so empowered can weed a forum with ease.

[Judd]

It’s time for me to come clean…. I’ve been a spambot this entire time.

[LhasaCM]

@Vicegrip 167536 wrote:

One of them got me to waste some time and answer a question it asked. 😡

Can it be set so any post with a link in it has to be approved by a human unless posted by a long term member? Say less than 50 or XX posts you need approval for any posts with hot link. Also set up a volunteer team of Spam Hunters. Four or five frequent visitors so empowered can weed a forum with ease.

I think it’s something that can be done, and I’m pretty sure it can be done even on the older version we’re using here. The question is: who can actually make that happen?

[Vicegrip]

@LhasaCM 167547 wrote:

I think it’s something that can be done, and I’m pretty sure it can be done even on the older version we’re using here. The question is: who can actually make that happen?

Who is in charge?

Might not be SFW with the sound on…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f96p-IhcZhQ

[chris_s]

@jrenaut 167496 wrote:

i keep waiting for someone to come out with forum software that’s actually a reimagination of this rather than incremental upgrades on what we’ve been using since pretty much the dawn of the internet.

Have you seen Discourse?

[hozn]

@Vicegrip 167536 wrote:

One of them got me to waste some time and answer a question it asked. 😡

Can it be set so any post with a link in it has to be approved by a human unless posted by a long term member? Say less than 50 or XX posts you need approval for any posts with hot link. Also set up a volunteer team of Spam Hunters. Four or five frequent visitors so empowered can weed a forum with ease.

That sounds like an excellent solution.

[jrenaut]

@chris_s 167551 wrote:

Have you seen Discourse?

Looks like Stackoverflow. Is it the same codebase? And it looks nice but not really a reimagining. More like a facelift.

[LhasaCM]

@Vicegrip 167549 wrote:

Who is in charge?

Might not be SFW with the sound on…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f96p-IhcZhQ

Good question I do not have an answer to. So, I sent a link to your post and this thread as a message to the site admin. through the “Contact Us” link to see if that gets to anyone…

[chris_s]

@jrenaut 167557 wrote:

Looks like Stackoverflow. Is it the same codebase? And it looks nice but not really a reimagining. More like a facelift.

I just really love the layout. Each topic is shown chronological like it’s flat, except if there are replies you can load them right then and there in context and also if it’s a reply to something you can load what it’s a reply to right there in context. I really feel like they managed to find a layout that combines all of the advantages of a flat chronological layout with most of the advantages of a threaded view simultaneously.

[hozn]

@chris_s 167551 wrote:

Have you seen Discourse?

That looks great.

Maybe it is time to bring this forum into 21st century?

Who can actually make that decision? Maybe we just setup a trial and if everyone agrees it is an improvement, we move to switch the various urls — maybe keeping a read-only version of this around for reference? I don’t think there is any point in trying to import data(?)

We probably should take this discussion to Henry by email.

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