About the spam bots

[Hungry4info]

One thing we could do is to disallow new users who have less than a certain number of posts from posting hyperlinks. However, this will most likely impact legitimate users (my first post had a link). This may also be ineffective against the trickier bots that add legit-looking posts (e.g., "Hi, I'm new") before editing spam links into their posts at a later time.

The BAUT forum does something like that. If that occurs here, we can expect a couple posts per week from people asking why their posts are being held for moderation or deleted.

[bdm]

One thing we could do is to disallow new users who have less than a certain number of posts from posting hyperlinks.

Won't work. All a user has to do is spam the forum with non-link posts until the magic number is reached, then they can start spamming their crud.

A probationary period of a certain time period (28 days to 3 months) may work better. New users whose posts contain hyperlinks have their posts held in abeyance until the post receives moderator approval. And if it's spam, the moderator brings down the spammer hammer.

[bdm]

This may also be ineffective against the trickier bots that add legit-looking posts (e.g., "Hi, I'm new") before editing spam links into their posts at a later time.

Do not allow posts to be edited after a certain time, say 1 day to 1 week after posting. This will impact on those legitimate uses of editing posts such as maintaining a thread with useful resources. To work around this, regular contributors can have this ability enabled as needed.

[BobHegwood]

Do not allow posts to be edited after a certain time, say 1 day to 1 week after posting. This will impact on those legitimate uses of editing posts such as maintaining a thread with useful resources. To work around this, regular contributors can have this ability enabled as needed.

If I may here, such a system sounds to me like it might be more work for the moderators than the spammers.
How would Selden, Guckytos, Chris manage such a system? There may well be tools for this so I'm just asking
from my Brain-Dead perspective again.

Thanks, Brain-Dead

[Hungry4info]

I don't know terribly much but pseudocoding here...

if (time > (post time + whatever))
{
editable = false;
}

No idea if it works that way.
I know some forums don't allow users to edit posts after someone has posted after them. I know that won't stop all spammers though.

[selden]

Just so you know: any specialized coding for features not already included in the standard version of phpbb v3.01 is simply not going to happen.

That said, if people can find appropriate features included in phpbb which could be applied, please let us know!

[t00fri]

At CM we found that our hit rate for spotting human spammers BEFORE they are admitted
for login is quite high (for now ).


*** I have deleted the remainder of this post, in order not to overmotivate human spammers with my analysis ***

Fridger

[BobHegwood]

At CM we found that our hit rate for spotting human spammers BEFORE they are admitted
for login is quite high (for now ).

This is decidedly true, based upon my experiences with both forums over the years.
Just FYI...

Thanks, Brain-Dead

[bdm]

How I would do it:

If moderator intervention is required before registration, include a field that the user must complete that asks the following question: why do you wish to be a member of this forum? It is a good Turing test because spambots will either ignore the field, or give canned responses that moderators will learn to recognise quickly.

[bdm]

Clicking the URL, immediately exhibits this commercial link under Signature:

(message intentionally snipped before example link)

Sorry to tell you this, but you've made a really bad blunder here by including the spam link in your example.

Many spammers sign up to forums just to get links in their profiles. By reposting the link, you are effectively doing their work for them. Please remove the link from your post.

For CM, I also suggest that any other spam links in spammers' profiles be deleted on sight, and the feature to add a link to profiles be disabled. Most links added to profiles in this way are spam, so it's of questionable worth to allow them.