Forum Password

We get lots of spammers here. It's one of several measures used to try to limit the amount of spam.

It's also useful for minimising the risk of forum accounts getting hacked.

mdgm wrote:
We get lots of spammers here. It's one of several measures used to try to limit the amount of spam.

Nice of alphonsefree0917 to confirm.

I said one of several measures used to try to limit the amount of spam. It's never going to be eliminated completely with a forum like this where posts are moderated after they are posted (i.e. posts don't have to be approved before they appear for other users to see). Some spammers use quite sophisticated techniques and slip through.

mdgm wrote:
I said one of several measures used to try to limit the amount of spam. It's never going to be eliminated completely with a forum like this where posts are moderated after they are posted before being moderated. Some spammers use quite sophisticated techniques and slip through.

Yes of course. I just thought it was ironic that he picked this particular thread to spam.

forum1.netgear.com actually requires the mods to read and release each post before it becomes publicly visible. That's a heavy burden for the mods, I think what's done here is likely good enough. Though if there were a way to have new user accounts automatically suspended if too many spam posts are reported, that might be a good thing.

As a moderator on another forum I can tell you that won't work. By the time spam posts are reported they could have dozens of spam posts posted.

Several years ago on a Sunday morning on that other (general computer issue) forum I noticed a spam post in a heavily used section. I did a quick inquiry and noted that the "member" was new having just joined and had 10 posts. So, I started looking at the posts and deleting the spam posts. After a few minutes, after I had deleted 8 posts, I noted that he still had about 12 posts. So I kept deleting spam posts and after about another few minutes I had deleted a total of 18 spam posts and checked the stats and he had 15 posts. I had caught up with him while he was posting and I was deleting them as fast as the system would allow and he was posting faster than I could delete them. After more than an hour total, I deleted the last of the 58 posts he has posted that morning. I'm not sure if he knew his posts were being deleted right behind him or not. The system has been changed on that forum so that you are limited in the number of posts you can make as a new member in a certain time frame. We also have the ability to subject a member to Moderator Preview for either a specified time or indefinitely so a post is not viewable to anyone who does not have moderator or admin privileges. We also have a special area where deleted posts go (they are not actually deleted, they go to a topic named Purgatory and only moderators and admins can see that topic. But with over 450,000 members things can get a little hectic at times. We have three Member Moderators, although on most days one is usually up at the crack of dawn and keeps things down to a dull roar. About half of our time is spam, the rest is refereeing arguments between members about whose system is best, and members getting out of hand with language. Problems that I have never seen here.

Spamming is the bane of any public forum and most have various techniques to try to keep it at bay. I have actually been surprised at times over the amount of spam that does hit, since this is a single product line forum. But sometimes they think they can sell their stuff to anyone. The mods here keep it very clean.

I moderate a much small forum. I ban the user first, to stop the flood. That particular BB software lets me delete all posts for a given user in one operation.

I have sometimes chased spam post-by-post here (as an ordinary user of course), so I was thinking a semi-automatic disabling method would help somewhat - though I agree that you'd still get a number of posts before it could kick in.

I agree that the mods here do a good job.

If someone was throwing that much garbage isn't there someway to temp ban or just show all posts of user and remove that way here ? At least we have the report spam button and we can help you out as they are found. Peeved me one morning when I thought I had an answer to a question and It and many other had gotten hit.

Been so far happy with moderators and the cleanliness of Netgear forums.

ttfn

*edited due to lack of reading the last post

To discuss what moderating tools are available to a moderator here would just be speculation. I have the habit (from being a moderator, I guess) of tracking down and reporting all spam posts of a "member". I hope it is helpful to this forums moderator but don't know for sure.

Blanket deletes can be troublesome. While in the case of a true spammer, they would be helpful, in other cases not so much. If a discussion gets heated and language degrades (something I have never seen here, thank goodness) you might want to delete one post but not the others. In the case of the other forum where I am a mod, there is a tool that we can "unapprove" all posts by a particular member, and in that case only the mods and professional staff can see them. Regular members do not see those posts. We can then go back and approve any that are ok. In the summary listing of topics for the mods (on the other site) there is a field that turns pink to indicate unapproved posts and the actual post in the thread has a pink background. We can also "unapprove" a single post or edit it as we need.

I guess the one thing that is really nice on this forum is the courtesy shown in the posts.

StephenB wrote:
That particular BB software lets me delete all posts for a given user in one operation.

i can do that here too, no problem :)

PapaBear wrote:
Blanket deletes can be troublesome. While in the case of a true spammer, they would be helpful, in other cases not so much. If a discussion gets heated and language degrades (something I have never seen here, thank goodness) you might want to delete one post but not the others.

we usually dont delete normal user postings at all, except for obvious spam. and 99.9% those come from dedicated spam accounts which we simply eliminate completely.
so even if someone does 100 spamposts i can kill them with one mouse click :)