MODERATOR CLEAN UP
Posted: Fri May 24, 2013 3:18 pm
Hi Guys,
Thoughts and advice, please.
Anyone can post ideas here, but the AR forum has a problem, and we need to spring clean. A lot.
New accounts are being signed up by spam bots, maybe spam humans, that then add posts and new topics to all threads and forums.
These are held as "awaiting approval" by a moderator, but they ALL appear to moderators. So we don't get the clean view that regular users see.
For example, I had to scroll to page 2 to find the 251 AroundtheBox thread, last posted to (legitimately) less than 12 hours ago.
So, action is needed, and the danger is that new legitimate members will be swept aside with the rest of the spam.
Moderator choices are powerful, but inconvenient.
For example, we can very quickly "disapprove" new topics and posts, by using the moderator queue of unapproved things, using the "mark all" option you may have noticed in your PM inbox, and letting rip.
But it isn't clear what will happen to this stuff. For example, in the AR2 A forum alone, there are 28,526 topics awaiting approval with 507 approved ones. Makes sense - 250 challenges plus results threads = 500, plus a few general announcements.
In addition, there are a further 31921 unapproved posts in legitimate threads.
So you can see the scale of the problem. All of the other forums are being equally hit. In all, there are 753000+ topics waiting for approval, and a further 803000+ posts in legitimate threads. And this is since March 2012 for posts, and August 2012 for topics (I guess someone cleared out March to August 2012 already)
I tracked one post from the last competition. It's clearly spamware, computer generated non-english that pastes together random words and phrases to seem like it's a person. Invariably there are links to click. The user joined on April 6 2013, has seven posts in the queue (Apr7, 10, 29, May17,22,23,23) so it's a repeat offender, and potentially escalating. The posts have been in a few different places, but mostly the "recent" ones, like competitions, AR1 Dark Masters, and Custom Levels All Terrain Vehicle. It's adding posts to existing threads, not creating their own new threads.
If "disapproval" meant deletion, then I'd go for it. But it looks like history is kept (well, logs at least), so this stuff possibly still hangs around somewhere, making the forums big and slow.
Moderators do have the power to delete topics entirely, but this has to be done one at a time, by looking at each thread. This would be unworkable.
Trouble is, once stuff is "disapproved", it disappears. I can't find where it goes to. So it might be deleted.
Thing is, the numbers are so big that getting rid of this baggage would seriously reduce the size of the forum, so making sure it's gone and not just stored under another list would be best.
I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how these forums work, to give us a bit of confidence before we take the plunge.
PS: It's just Ioncorpse and me at present, but if anyone else wants moderator status, I think it'll take a PM or email to Peter Stock to get it - do it now while he's here.... (There are other moderators listed, but none active).
Thoughts and advice, please.
Anyone can post ideas here, but the AR forum has a problem, and we need to spring clean. A lot.
New accounts are being signed up by spam bots, maybe spam humans, that then add posts and new topics to all threads and forums.
These are held as "awaiting approval" by a moderator, but they ALL appear to moderators. So we don't get the clean view that regular users see.
For example, I had to scroll to page 2 to find the 251 AroundtheBox thread, last posted to (legitimately) less than 12 hours ago.
So, action is needed, and the danger is that new legitimate members will be swept aside with the rest of the spam.
Moderator choices are powerful, but inconvenient.
For example, we can very quickly "disapprove" new topics and posts, by using the moderator queue of unapproved things, using the "mark all" option you may have noticed in your PM inbox, and letting rip.
But it isn't clear what will happen to this stuff. For example, in the AR2 A forum alone, there are 28,526 topics awaiting approval with 507 approved ones. Makes sense - 250 challenges plus results threads = 500, plus a few general announcements.
In addition, there are a further 31921 unapproved posts in legitimate threads.
So you can see the scale of the problem. All of the other forums are being equally hit. In all, there are 753000+ topics waiting for approval, and a further 803000+ posts in legitimate threads. And this is since March 2012 for posts, and August 2012 for topics (I guess someone cleared out March to August 2012 already)
I tracked one post from the last competition. It's clearly spamware, computer generated non-english that pastes together random words and phrases to seem like it's a person. Invariably there are links to click. The user joined on April 6 2013, has seven posts in the queue (Apr7, 10, 29, May17,22,23,23) so it's a repeat offender, and potentially escalating. The posts have been in a few different places, but mostly the "recent" ones, like competitions, AR1 Dark Masters, and Custom Levels All Terrain Vehicle. It's adding posts to existing threads, not creating their own new threads.
If "disapproval" meant deletion, then I'd go for it. But it looks like history is kept (well, logs at least), so this stuff possibly still hangs around somewhere, making the forums big and slow.
Moderators do have the power to delete topics entirely, but this has to be done one at a time, by looking at each thread. This would be unworkable.
Trouble is, once stuff is "disapproved", it disappears. I can't find where it goes to. So it might be deleted.
Thing is, the numbers are so big that getting rid of this baggage would seriously reduce the size of the forum, so making sure it's gone and not just stored under another list would be best.
I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how these forums work, to give us a bit of confidence before we take the plunge.
PS: It's just Ioncorpse and me at present, but if anyone else wants moderator status, I think it'll take a PM or email to Peter Stock to get it - do it now while he's here.... (There are other moderators listed, but none active).