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Garbage Posts

Idea shared by SmarterUser - 5/4/2015 at 5:32 AM

Proposed

All the garbage posts here tell me three things:

1. The community feature is not ready for prime time.

2. SmarterTools staff don't view the community outside of hours.

3. We need the old forums back.

At the very least, new users should be allowed no more than x number of posts until they have proven to be legit. Or better yet, bring back the old forums. This is a poor substitute for what was a user friendly and vibrant community.

7 Replies

Reply to Thread

Brian Ellwood Replied

5/4/2015 at 8:58 AM

I tend to flag them for review but this weekend was crazy... ST might think about appointing some moderators to assist (not that a human could possibly flag 2000+ pages of it) but a super-mod might have been able to at least limit registrations in the interim?

Steve Reid Replied

5/5/2015 at 5:17 AM

I also think there must be more that can be done to solve the spam posts problem.

I usually delete a lot of spam posts everyday. However I was away on the weekend without internet so I was unable to help.

Bruce Barnes Replied

5/5/2015 at 5:58 AM

There were more than 8,000 garbage posts over the weekend, Steve. I initially deleted several pages and gave up when I realized how fast they were being posted.

No one was able to help. The poster appeared to be some kind of bot which, once it got going, was posting several posts per minute - continuously.

Bruce Barnes ChicagoNetTech Inc brucecnt@comcast.net Phonr: (773) 491-9019 Phone: (224) 444-0169 E-Mail and DNS Security Specialist Network Security Specialist Customer Service Portal: https://portal.chicagonettech.com Website: https://www.ChicagoNetTech.com Security Blog: http://networkbastion.blogspot.com/ Web and E-Mail Hosting, E-Mail Security and Consulting

Paul Blank Replied

5/5/2015 at 7:24 AM

"SmarterUser" is quite correct. Many Web forums take care of a lot of this malarkey by making a new poster respond to a verification email and then limiting their ability to post (more than between 0 & 2 messages) until ample time goes by and/or other conditions are met. There are also other mechanisms by which posting using multiple logins is prevented, such as logging the posters IP address and comparing that as well.

And yes, the old forums were kinda neat.