So spamming is not just a problem inworld but on forums too...

[Barry Lubezki]

I don't visit this forum much, and now that i do visit it, i see that it's been infected with loads of spam messages. Great. Does anybody clear up this mess?

[Sassy Romano]

Hi Barry, it gets hit daily, it's very tedious.  I put in a JIRA (not that I expected anything from it) and it was closed with "unactionable".

It's a great corporate face of LL don't you think?

[Ethan Paslong]

perhaps we should start forwarding every spam message to Ebbe's account in sl or fb ... he would see what happens...but for now thy offer a great platform for this disgusting content

[Phoebe Avro]

I stopped the spambots on my own forum quite easy, I wonder if LL can work out how to stop it?

[Barry Lubezki]

I think it's typical of the way Linden Lab runs it's business,. Imagine that i came here to complain about griefers inworld, and finding this forum crawling with spam...

But hey, LL doesn't read these forums anyway, so what do they care?

 

 

[Conifer Dada]

I've never come across any other forums that get spammed like this one.  Yes, they do get individuals who post annoying stuff, plus trolls etc., but nothing like the blanket spamming this place gets day after day, week after week.

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Phoebe Avro wrote:

I stopped the spambots on my own forum quite easy, I wonder if LL can work out how to stop it?

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Yes, but then they wouldn't be able to claim hundreds of thousands of signups every month...

 That said...

I have not worked with this particular brand of software before. My experience comes from setting up JSP and PHP forums that were based on opensource forums. Those have easy plugins for things like Captchas, moderation queues, IP blocking, sorting signups by portions of the IP, and various other moderator friendly tools.

The software here was designed for a Q&A and blogging system, and they've hacked it into a forum.

- The resulting hack may in fact mean that adding 'simple changes' is no longer so simple...

 

My suggestion to LLs would be to put a Captcha system onto account registration, and to scrap this forum software for something designed exclusively as a forum. Would take a bit of work to then patch the login / account systems together - but there are contractors out there who specialize in that.

Whoever at LLs has been tasked with moderating this place needs to get get some office time with Ebbe Linden and and ask to be given authority to replace it with something that better suits the business - the specifics of which they'd be better at figuring out than us (when I had to do that for a prior client, I scrapped some options that might have looked better to the outside world due to issues they would have with quirky needs of my client - so we need to realize the lindens will know which choice is best. But they'd be hard pressed to argue the current one is working).

 

[Qie Niangao]

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Pussycat Catnap wrote:

... replace it with something that better suits the business...

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I kinda hope it hasn't come to that again. I'm no fan of Lithium, but every time we switch forums software some content gets lost despite a lot of time and effort spent trying to preserve archives. For most stuff I suppose it doesn't matter, but it's become very difficult to track back into the history of LSL scripting and the same must be true for all the other technical topics.

That said, Lithium's business focus seems to be shifting ever further from relevance to what LL needs. There are a few other companies using it for customer support forums, but the ones I've seen are relatively tiny and inactive. Meanwhile, Lithium just bought Klout (talk about a company whose fifteen minutes have passed!) so it's possible LL won't be the ones deciding to pull the plug.

[Pussycat Catnap]

If I were calling the shots, and assuming what they need is relevant to what I can see from this side of the fence...

I'd tell them to go with an opensource PHP or JSP 'BB' option. Something free, basic, with complete code, and with lots of plugins.

Do the blog with blogging software, and the Q&A section... fold into the archive and close it up, opening some Q&A forums instead. The 'wiki' could then be brought back into 'focus' (its still there, but a tad neglected by the community) as a better option for handling things like persistent FAQs and script libraries.

 

 

[Phoebe Avro]

Spambots used to go straight through the Captcha system I had, so i set up a system where on registration the person has to answer a question, this stopped them all in their lil bot tracks^^

[Dillon Levenque]

Was it, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?"

 

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Oh Boy, More Voodoo & Escort SPAM - India must luv us

[Perrie Juran]

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KarenMichelle Lane wrote:

Oh Boy, More Voodoo & Escort SPAM - India must luv us

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Twenty Five Pages...........this is insane.

[Dresden Ceriano]

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KarenMichelle Lane wrote:

Oh Boy, More Voodoo & Escort SPAM - India must luv us

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I'll only become interested should they manage to combine the two, thereby offering to satiate my carnal desires as well as my desire for revenge.

...Dres

[Pamela Galli]

25???

 

Is there no way to trace where it is coming from?

[Pussycat Catnap]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

25???

 

Is there no way to trace where it is coming from?

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Doing that is trivially easy. If this were normal forum software, they could IP ban the entire city block that it all originates from, put in first post moderation, signup captchas, and call it a day.

 

[Kenbro Utu]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

25???

 

Is there no way to trace where it is coming from?

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It probably doesn't matter with their spam policy: 

[KarenMichelle Lane]

How hard can it be to place a check on the Resident Role for new accounts limiting them to posting only 2 or 3 anything [or whatever seems fair] until a moderator manually ups them to the next step in that Role.  I haven't noticed any of these idiots even trying to fake being anything other than what they are.

SPAM Issue solved.

This allows the moderators time to perform this authentication role for new members to the forum.

New members with issues can still post a question in SL Answers and respond to the helper posts via the permalink as they do now.

All this would do is limit the Open Forum posting ability until they can be verified.

[Nova Convair]

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Phoebe Avro wrote:

Spambots used to go straight through the Captcha system I had, so i set up a system where on registration the person has to answer a question, this stopped them all in their lil bot tracks^^

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I can imagine that this will stop the spambots Once I registered to a forum like that. Only problem is: many amercians think everyone else is one too. The local and small things and details I don't know though.

hmmmm .. .never heared - click

what - click

are - click

this people - click

thinking - click

or I must be too stupid - click click .... click

finally !!! I know something !!!

At least it was entertaining

[Phil Deakins]

Posting ideas on how to stop the spam is absolutely no good at all. Any forum owner, who is the slightest bit interested in his/her/its forum, would take simple steps to stop it. The fact that LL doesn't take any steps at all shows conclusively that they have no interest whatsoever in the forum. For users, it's a case of live with the spam or don't use the forum. Anything more than that is a waste of mental energy.

[Dresden Ceriano]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Posting ideas on how to stop the spam is absolutely no good at all. Any forum owner, who is the slightest bit interested in his/her/its forum, would take simple steps to stop it. The fact that LL doesn't take any steps at all shows conclusively that they have no interest whatsoever in the forum. For users, it's a case of live with the spam or don't use the forum. Anything more than that is a waste of mental energy.

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You seem to be oblivious to the fact that bitching about that which one cannot control can sometimes alleviate a person's aggravation with said uncontrollable thing, and is therefore not necessarily a waste.

...Dres