The Growing Spam Problem

Hi,

Perhaps a solution ( or two ) to the growing problem of spam is to institute a 7-day waiting period for new members ( before they can post ).

Or put all new members into probationary period with their first 5 posts held in digital escrow ( to be monitored & censored by moderators ) before being posted for general consumption.

Just a thought.

:)

Another approach ( though a mite more drastic and arbitrary ) is to lock the LHF front door for a while ( don't allow any new members to sign up ).

A while could be translated into a indeterminate length of time ( over a few instances ) until deterrence is achieved.

:)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Earl K

Another approach ( though a mite more drastic and arbitrary ) is to lock the LHF front door for a while ( don't allow any new members to sign up ).

A while could be translated into a indeterminate length of time ( over a few instances ) until deterrence is achieved.

:)

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5 Lansing related questions to answer before membership approval . If someone is googling for info the forum will come up anyway . The information is there for everyone on the web to access , but you'd need to be genuine to go to the trouble of answering 5 research based questions .

Just an idea .

..... BTW ..... 56 and it still works without medication ... :bouncy:


Richard

Is there a spam problem?

I have been reading this marvelous site for many years and have not noticed any. Please give examples.

I would think the recent one-post with commercial link spammers (all from NY, for some reason, or so they say) could be stopped simply through a 3-day waiting period after joining before being allowed to post. Most spammers would lose interest. :dont-know:

Better moderation of the site would handle the small problem. There are too few moderators, or at least too few active ones.

Since it's now 2017, it's a simple task for a programmer to put the first one, two, or three posts from a new account in a moderator's queue which goes directly to a moderator or moderators for review before being allowed on the site. To be effective, moderators would need to pay attention to the queue or notification of a new poster to act in a timely matter. A queue that is neglected for days or weeks is the death knell for new membership.

There could even be a small group of newly-appointed "new poster moderators" whose only task is to check these new member posts, leaving the regular mods to do moderation of established members.

I believe I've seen a ground swell of new members registering with suspiciously closely related names ( over the past couple of days ).

It seems to me they are most likely aliases for spam-bots setting up shop for who knows what.

Has anyone else seen this surge ( + more importantly has it been dealt with ) ???

:)

I was not aware you could sort the membership list by join date?