Support, Please Help with Forum Spam

[Debbi]

Although I am happy to help eradicate spam in the forums (I love deleting those creeps!), I am spending a minimum of half an hour a day doing nothing but deleting spam posts. Please help me, Celeste, and Ed out. Ed especially does not need to be wasting valuable editing time deleting spam from the forums.

1. Recurit more moderators. I'm sure there are veterans here who would volunteer to delete spam. The more the merrier.
2. Put Captcha on forum account sign-ups or some other preventative measure. Again, the more the merrier.
3. Let me know which version of the forum software this is so I can ask the developers for advice on deleting multiple posts by the same author, etc. to cut down on the time it takes.

I remember Celeste posting several good ideas on cutting down spam in the forums, but can't remember them specifically.

Just trying to keep the forums clean and to present CC as a professional community and not a spam vehicle

Thanks!

[Ed]

Hi Debbi,

I try to forward all spam-eradicating ideas to Support. I agree that the time we spend blasting spam is too much.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Ed

[Debbi]

Thanks Ed

[Celeste Stewart]

It takes way too much time and I'm at the point of not wanting to do it anymore. It's like serving on the board of a service organization, one year is about enough and then it's time for a new board to take over. I don't mind helping out but I'm a bit burnt out on it.

If we weren't manually deleting spam, the forum would be unusable. There's got to be a better way.

[Debbi]

Celeste, I don't know how you've stuck with it so long. Seeing first-hand how time-consuming and frustrating the process is, I want to salute you for your generosity in time and effort all these years. Maybe more volunteers will come forward to take this off your hands And Ed's too!

[Evelyn]

Please let me help! Tell me how to delete the $%^& messages and I'll take part of the load. It's incredibly irritating that I get an email for a new post from every forum I ever posted in... and it's that spam crap.

Tell me what to do and I'll stop taking a hammer to the email.

Evelyn

[aprilk10]

Ditto...Let me know how I can help! I'm pretty new here still, but will help if I can!

[4rumid]

Count me in -- I'm often on the forums late at night, when it seems a lot of spam appears. I'd be happy to help get rid of it.

[jrichards]

Thanks for the suggestions. Spam is an ongoing battle and it's really touch to find air tight solutions.

But here's what we can do.
I've approved Evelyn as a moderator. So hopefully she can help out with some of the spam.
I've changed the captcha (we've had one for some months now) for a new harder to read version.

Regarding the forum software we're using a recent version of phpbb so if you want some advice on techniques for stopping spam that's the place to start reading. Is at http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &t=1861645

The next step is to force new users comments to require moderation for the first few posts before they are allowed to post freely and in real time. It's a bit of a bummer for new users to sign up post their question and then have to wait, but if necessary that will be the next step.

-jrichards
Support

[Celeste Stewart]

Thanks Jeff - and our new spam killer, Evelyn!

Jeff, I'm wondering if it would help to get rid of a few of the sub-forums. It seems as if spammers try to hit each sub-forum at least once as they bombard us. Several of the sub-forums such as Photography, Illustration, and Video are rarely used. Maybe combine Photo/Illustration and then delete Video since CC no longer accepts video submissions. I also think that Site Renovations and Suggestions and Requests could easily be combined. Maybe delete In House Work for Writers as that's rarely used as well. The Customer forums are rarely uses as well so maybe combine those? Not sure if streamlining the subforums will reduce spam or not, but it does seem like the spammers try to cover each of them.

[Evelyn]

As my daughter would say, "Hugs to all!" Thanks. I'll begin my quest right after I get done playing in the woods this evening.

[Ed]

Thanks to Evelyn and the other volunteers. We'll keep you in mind if we need you.

Ed

[4rumid]

Ok, please do.

[Debbi]

Evelyn,

Welcome to the SpamKiller Squad! If you have any questions about killing spam, email me. My pen name is DM Gutierrez.

[jrichards]

Hi Celeste,

That's a great idea. For the time being I've just locked the illustration and video section to let people get used to the idea that they may be disappearing soon and expanded the name of the Photography Section. Hopefully, that will also assist in keeping the spam to a minimum. If this does help, and we don't just get more spam in the other categories, we can look at decommissioning some of the other less popular forums.

Thanks,
-jrichards