Bad faith MSE anti-spam techniques

Daytona

Rather than the bad faith act of labeling 'new' MSE posters potential spammers, why not use the more standard industry techniques ?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=20641677&postcount=166

robt_2

Daytona wrote: »

Rather than the bad faith act of labeling 'new' MSE posters potential spammers, why not use the more standard industry techniques ?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=20641677&postcount=166

Because they don't know how to run a forum of this size, it has out grown them. They simply ignore advice from people who run large forums as a living.

thelawnet

MSE_Webmaster wrote: »

PS. robt, can you please let me know who these people are who run large forums, I'd like to speak with them.

http://rankings.big-boards.com/

91 ahead of you, 43 of them running this same software.

*MF*

Thanks for that link ... once again reaffirms the wealth of info out there!

I extracted this stat from the site for MSE, fascinating!

Rightly or wrongly the question it immediately begged for me was - is there any connection between the outbreaks of spam on this board and the allocation of the source of visitors to this site?

Sierra Leone ...

MSE_Martin

Thanks for the notes above. However some of them are based on some erroneous facts.

The first thing to note is we have just upgraded to the latest vbulletin software, the anti-spam facilities on it are one of the reasons we did it. It was a huge task, and meant the forum was closed for the weekend - which many users dont like. We try and absolutely minimise downtime.

There are no easy fixes to these things though, I take careful judgements to try and balance accessibility for all users, with the problem of people spamming. Its no easy decision.

As for bigger forums, I'd be interested to hear. The big board stats listed above are Im afraid nonesense. We have our own logs which work of the actual traffic - I can tell you at least 98% of our visits are UK - so the graph above is very strange and doesn't bear any resemblence to the real traffic or scale of this site.

MSE Forums is one of the UK's top ten social networking sites, with only the likes of Facebook, Myspace, Bebo bigger; they are all pure forums and have their own proprietory software. We started as a tiny site based on content not forums and thus used off the peg software that we now stick to. WE've worked with Vbulletin to optomise the site, and they recognise us as a place to test because of our virtually unmatched scale.

Six months ago I hired our first dedicated developer for the forums, we've been working step-by-step through the issues - stability and efficiency being the prime ones. The forum is now much faster than ever, the days of regular slowness are long gone, and we're constantly working to improve. Spam is on the list to deal with, yet its my job to prioritise how the thing operates.

Frankly its easy to snipe, make assumptions and rely on incorrect info. We like to work with our users to try and make the place better, and suggestions like the OPs are welcome, but don't assume we sit on our backsides, or don't know what we're talking about. This forum has many near unique legal and logistical issues and we work within those parameters while tryign to develop tools on here to develop it better.

If you have practical suggestions of what can be done, I know our techie team would love it, yet often the solutions given don't work for us for one reason and another. Yet that doesn't mean we don't look.

Kind regards

Martin

*MF*

MSE_Martin wrote: »

<snip>

The big board stats listed above are Im afraid nonesense. We have our own logs which work of the actual traffic - I can tell you at least 98% of our visits are UK - so the graph above is very strange and doesn't bear any resemblence to the real traffic or scale of this site.

<snip>

Kind regards

Martin

It was my doubts over the accuracy of the stats that prompted my above post - t'was good to hear the real and correct position.

ailuro2

I have no problem with people not being allowed to post links when they are still very new to the site, if a bargain is that wonderful then give the details on what to search for in Google, then an established member will post the link.

Simple.

what I like about the later versions of MSE are not having to wait between searches, and the speed of it these days -

considering this site is free to use, and saves most of it's users lots of money every year, don't you think it churlish to moan about having to wait to post a link??

thelawnet

MSE_Martin wrote: »

As for bigger forums, I'd be interested to hear. The big board stats listed above are Im afraid nonesense. We have our own logs which work of the actual traffic - I can tell you at least 98% of our visits are UK - so the graph above is very strange and doesn't bear any resemblence to the real traffic or scale of this site.

Indeed the traffic graph above is clearly rubbish, I've no idea where they get it from.

However the fact that there are 90 forums with more posts is easily verifiable, simply by looking at them.

MSE Forums is one of the UK's top ten social networking sites, with only the likes of Facebook, Myspace, Bebo bigger; they are all pure forums and have their own proprietory software. We started as a tiny site based on content not forums and thus used off the peg software that we now stick to. WE've worked with Vbulletin to optomise the site, and they recognise us as a place to test because of our virtually unmatched scale.

Unmatched is clearly not true.

http://rankings.big-boards.com/?filter=vBulletin,all

For instance:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/

8,031 registered users logged in.
120,421 users total. 2,628,812 total threads.
63,237,156 total posts. 2,459,427 archived threads.
51,793,923 archived posts. 3 users banned today.
9,242 total users bans.

They've got 6 times more users logged in at the moment (and I'd guess this is not the busiest time for a primarily US site), 10 times more posts in total. Vastly bigger.

In terms of UK sites Digital Spy is busier. Student Room is probably too: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/forums

Both vBulletin installations.

Frankly its easy to snipe, make assumptions and rely on incorrect info. We like to work with our users to try and make the place better, and suggestions like the OPs are welcome, but don't assume we sit on our backsides, or don't know what we're talking about. This forum has many near unique legal and logistical issues and we work within those parameters while tryign to develop tools on here to develop it better.

Yes, the legal issues are interesting, and I wish you'd respond to my emails on this matter. Or perhaps they weren't forwarded to you. No response either way.

robt_2

MSE_Martin wrote: »

Thanks for the notes above. However some of them are based on some erroneous facts.

The first thing to note is we have just upgraded to the latest vbulletin software, the anti-spam facilities on it are one of the reasons we did it. It was a huge task, and meant the forum was closed for the weekend - which many users dont like. We try and absolutely minimise downtime.

I think most users with even the smallest amount of technical knowledge will accept that downtime is unavoidable, and it would be unreasonable to complain about it. And you should be commended too for having it back up way ahead of schedule, and that the fact that MSE very rarely has downtime.

There are no easy fixes to these things though, I take careful judgements to try and balance accessibility for all users, with the problem of people spamming. Its no easy decision.

There are easy fixes to many things though. This forum is still running years out of date captcha - it would be a 30 minute fix with no downtime to fix that. Personally, I would use an updated captcha system and a question which a human needs to answer as you see on other sites (for example, "What is three multiplied by five?", and if anything ither than '15' is entered into the box the registration is abandoned).

I don't know what email addresses spammers are using to register but you could quite easily require manual aproval for members joining with gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc addresses. Granted it is extra work, but onlyfive minutes a day tops. One of the largest forum sites in the UK goes so far as to charge for people signing up with free email addresses - I'm certainly not suggesting you do that by any means but it gives you an idea of the problem they face with spammers - and the problems that you WILL face as the site continues to grow.

As for bigger forums, I'd be interested to hear. The big board stats listed above are Im afraid nonesense. We have our own logs which work of the actual traffic - I can tell you at least 98% of our visits are UK - so the graph above is very strange and doesn't bear any resemblence to the real traffic or scale of this site.

The users location is inaccurate but the size of the boards is not - one click can tell you that it is not 'nonsense'.

MSE Forums is one of the UK's top ten social networking sites, with only the likes of Facebook, Myspace, Bebo bigger; they are all pure forums and have their own proprietory software. We started as a tiny site based on content not forums and thus used off the peg software that we now stick to. WE've worked with Vbulletin to optomise the site, and they recognise us as a place to test because of our virtually unmatched scale.

I'm interested as to why you call MSE a 'social networking site' as it is definetly not in the traditional sense of the word. Maybe if you just said it was a 'forum' it would not be in the top ten?

This site does not have 'virtually unmatched size', and vBulletin will work closely with any large site if requested to do so, it is beneficial to both parties afterall

Six months ago I hired our first dedicated developer for the forums, we've been working step-by-step through the issues - stability and efficiency being the prime ones. The forum is now much faster than ever, the days of regular slowness are long gone, and we're constantly working to improve. Spam is on the list to deal with, yet its my job to prioritise how the thing operates.

Stability and speed have definetly been showing an upward trend in the last six to nine months, which is great .

Frankly its easy to snipe, make assumptions and rely on incorrect info. We like to work with our users to try and make the place better, and suggestions like the OPs are welcome, but don't assume we sit on our backsides, or don't know what we're talking about. This forum has many near unique legal and logistical issues and we work within those parameters while tryign to develop tools on here to develop it better.

I don't think anyone 'snipes' - it is just frustrating when you offer ideas and try to help that you get no feedback - see below.

If you have practical suggestions of what can be done, I know our techie team would love it, yet often the solutions given don't work for us for one reason and another. Yet that doesn't mean we don't look.

As someone above me in a previous post has said - if people actually responded (even to say 'no'), then people might be more willing to offers ideas and suggestions from their own experience. Whilst the site is great, I find feedback from staff quite poor - take this thread for example - a new member asked a legititate question and it was at least a day before a member of staff gave an answer - and even after that it has been deleted with individual posts removed from the thread, one of which was from MSE Webmaster!

Anyway, keep up the good work

PS Please don't ever put the lemon theme back on to try out

Patr100

Daytona wrote: »

Rather than the bad faith act of labeling 'new' MSE posters potential spammers, why not use the more standard industry techniques ?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=20641677&postcount=166

Adding a captcha to post links for new users wouldn't stop those new members who quite obviously have just the same day joined to manually post a glowing advert and link to site they have just found/used etc which they neglect to mention they also own or have a financial interest in.
-

MSE_Martin

I've read the notes above, and am too tired to start flick-flacking over this.

Why do i call MSE a social networking site? Because that's the category hitwise put it in and i was quoting that data.

Bigger forums? Big boards seems to be almost unsupported at the moment and isnt getting our data. Im sure there are other forums out there of similar scale, but very view (and the users online depends on the settings so isnt an accurate comparison).

Yet more importantly the accusation that we dont know what we're doing is unfair on me and my team. We have lots of issues to prioritise.

These forums run well - our rules are bespoke. There's spam bot spam and we also have lots of people who come on thinking "i'll plug my business" on here, imagingin they're the first to think of it, without realising the rules. ANd the no links post has helped that too.

We're constantly looking to improve and have new cachtcha settings already on and done some tweaking. Yet frankly back seat driving is quite easy but you can't necessarily see the dashboard.

And as for legal emails they havent got through to me. Having said that, unless its major I dont deal with our legal issues directly anyway - and the general guidance from the lawyers is the best thing to do is to keep cases confidential - so im not sure there's any benefit there. Thank you though

Kind regards

Martin