Spambots

torbrex

suki1964 wrote: »

Im just loving the person whos bumped each post up the lists again my adding to the thread that its "reported"

if it has been bumped, I just leave it.
That is one of my pet hates on these multiple postings :mad:
its ok to bump a single spammer that might have been missed but when the board is flooded there is no need for it.

yellowbear

Next time I'll use the button that shows that a post has been reported. That way everyone can see that people are hitting the spam/report button and there's no need to say that it's been done.



Ooops, silly me. There isn't one.

torbrex

yellowbear wrote: »

Next time I'll use the button that shows that a post has been reported. That way everyone can see that people are hitting the spam/report button and there's no need to say that it's been done.



Ooops, silly me. There isn't one.

strange, I hit either the spam button or the report button (if no spam) but never feel the need to tell anyone that I have done it and thus bump the spam back to the top of the board again.

suki1964

torbrex wrote: »

strange, I hit either the spam button or the report button (if no spam) but never feel the need to tell anyone that I have done it and thus bump the spam back to the top of the board again.

indeed, when its showing as 20 odd views and no replies, its obvious that those views were for the purpose of hitting the spam button, as I was busily doing at 3.30 when the attack started

JJ_Egan

Its a result of a poor sign up regime many other forums don't have the lets be nice to spambots ethos of MSE.

lovinituk

The forum software needs to be changed but I realise that would be a big job. VBulletin is somewhat lacking nowadays compared to some of the better offerings like Xenforo.

I help to moderate a forum that runs on Xenforo and the type of posts referred to here almost never see a live thread. They are filtered in to a moderation queue where they are deleted and IP addresses banned before they even come close to being seen on the forum by users.

India is the new global spam centre and much of it is manual.

Mandelbrot

suki1964 wrote: »

indeed, when its showing as 20 odd views and no replies, it's obvious that those views were for the purpose of hitting the spam button, as I was busily doing at 3.30 when the attack started

Which is how we get a clue to the number of spam button presses the system needs, before it will consign the spam post to history ...

yellowbear

But how do you/we/they know that the spam button has been hit?
A hundred people may have viewed the thread - doesn't necessarily mean that they have all hit the button.

Does anyone know how many hits it takes to delete the thread, if it does at all?

torbrex

yellowbear wrote: »

But how do you/we/they know that the spam button has been hit?
A hundred people may have viewed the thread - doesn't necessarily mean that they have all hit the button.

Does anyone know how many hits it takes to delete the thread, if it does at all?

There is no 'they'
No-one is at the other end of this kind of spam, it is churned out by a computer so trying to tell them is a waste of time.

I personally don't care to know that you have hit the spam button or reported the thread, I just assume that if you have taken the time to open the thread then you will hit the button while you are there.

If you mark the thread as reported then it is bumped back up the boards and becomes 'live' again on forum searches, it will show up in bold type as unread and people (like me) will need to open it again to see if they have already marked it as spam and this can be very disheartening and offputting.
Hence the reason that I don't even open threads that have been bumped.

Quietmanc

What I really don't understand is the point to all this.The spambot won't know that we're on to it,but what do the people who programmed it stand to gain when the posts are deleted on a quick and regular basis? Oh,also,why have some boards still not got a spam button??