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Posted: |
May 10, 2022 - 6:55 AM
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By: |
LeHah
(Member)
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The obvious answer is this:
1.) Lock the board from allowing new members for, say, six weeks. Six months preferred, as the longer its locked spam bots will slowly dwindle off.
2.) (If this is possible, as I don't know what it looks like "under the hood") While the board is locked, delete all members who haven't been active in the last six months minimum. Bots and trolls have a habit of making a bunch of dupe accounts all at once in the case that they're locked out of an account later on. Again, a longer timeline - ex: accounts inactive for the last year, accounts inactive for the last five years - would be even better but that may be too much work.
3.) Maybe, eventually, possibly reopen the board to public sign-ups
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I remember years ago when spammers were met with outrage (which is what they wanted). This seemed more to be a source of......meh, you want to try this? no-one is taking you seriously.
Actually, spammers want you to click on their links (and then do or get whatever they have ready for you), it's trolls that want you to get outraged. Spammers do it for the money, trolls for the heck of it. There are possibly some hybrid forms, though you do not encounter them often in the wild.
Dammit. I’m getting so old I forgot the difference.
Haha... I have a collection of internet scams, trojans, viruses, etc. I find some of these quite interesting. I used to sometimes reply to spammers to. I remember I once replied to the typical Nigeria "you have the last name of my deceased client we need to get the money out of the country" spam mail, pretending to be an elderly woman who just lost her husband and was now the first time she was at the computer and would do anything to help. It was hilarious, the responses I got (from somebody obviously now thinking he found an easy victim). I later published these in what was back then a Yahoo group, lots of fun.
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The obvious answer is this:
1.) Lock the board from allowing new members for, say, six weeks. Six months preferred, as the longer its locked spam bots will slowly dwindle off.
I think that would definitely keep new members more away than spammers. Yes, it will keep spam bots away, but I don't think I would want to keep spam bots away at the cost of keeping actually interested members away.
2.) (If this is possible, as I don't know what it looks like "under the hood") While the board is locked, delete all members who haven't been active in the last six months minimum. Bots and trolls have a habit of making a bunch of dupe accounts all at once in the case that they're locked out of an account later on. Again, a longer timeline - ex: accounts inactive for the last year, accounts inactive for the last five years - would be even better but that may be too much work.
That's also not such a good idea. I once took a break from this board that was easily 5 years long, and then returned one day. I likely would not come back were it not for the fact that I still had an account. Sometimes people don't post anything for a while for various reasons.
It's not as if the spam on this board is that much of a problem.
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1.) Lock the board from allowing new members for, say, six weeks. Six months preferred, as the longer its locked spam bots will slowly dwindle off.
2.) (If this is possible, as I don't know what it looks like "under the hood") While the board is locked, delete all members who haven't been active in the last six months minimum. Bots and trolls have a habit of making a bunch of dupe accounts all at once in the case that they're locked out of an account later on. Again, a longer timeline - ex: accounts inactive for the last year, accounts inactive for the last five years - would be even better but that may be too much work.
3.) Maybe, eventually, possibly reopen the board to public sign-ups
I must say, I think this is a bad plan. It would keep out sincere new members, and if you knew how many of us have passed away over the last 22 years (my time here), we can't afford that. This needs to be a living forum. Do you really want to lock out the next guy who could be a great member?
Also, deleting inactive members would sweep out some genuine folks who don't pop by as often as we'd like.
The best answer is Do Not Reply to obvious bots and trolls, and such accounts should be deleted on a case by case basis.
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Posted: |
May 10, 2022 - 7:14 AM
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By: |
LeHah
(Member)
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I must say, I think this is a bad plan. It would keep out sincere new members, and if you knew how many of us have passed away over the last 23 years (my time here), we can't afford that. This needs to be a living forum.
Well its something of a coin flip: do you want less spammers or do you want a public forum? As the board's tech hasn't been updated much in 20 years, we're more vulnerable to bots than other sites. (Similarly, you can't be 100% free of bots ever, no matter how much you update.)
That said, while I feel for people leaving and coming back, at the same time, this is not often the case. The people that are active are "the regulars" and we all know each other by our level of activity. FSM is insular because of its lack of new people already, blocking the trickle of new members wouldn't change that much if at all.
That said, I'm also not married to this idea. I'm just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. But it would solve the spam issue outright.
The best answer is Do Not Reply to obvious bots and trolls, and such accounts should be deleted on a case by case basis.
As much as I agree with this - and I use the "block" feature here A LOT - its also only masking the symptoms unless *everyone* here does it. (We also go much, much deeper into the rabbit hole if we throw Trolls into this Spam discussion, so perhaps thats best left for another thread?)
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Well its something of a coin flip: do you want less spammers or do you want a public forum?
That's definitely easy to answer for me. If the option is either A) "no spammers and no new members" or B) "new members and the occasional spammer", I will take option B any time.
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There is no one here. They all have packed up and went to Fred’s Discount.
It is probably the people who own FSM to generate revenue from advertisements, more post, more money. Got it now.
Yeah, it's all about the enormous amount of wealth and splendor that Lukas generates from us bickering here on this site, riches which have not been seen since the days of Salomon.
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