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Idea for reducing spam
http://prod.lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10488		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Uberdude [ Tue Jun 24, 2014 4:50 am ]
Post subject:  Idea for reducing spam
Some guy/spam bot keeps making new accounts to advertise windows in Cleveland with links in his signature presumably for Search Engine Optimization, e.g.

viewtopic.php?p=167802#p167802 (post way well be deleted by the time you read it)

A rule that your signature can't contain links until you have been liked 10 times (or some other means of establishing legitimate presence) would perhaps be a way to alleviate this (or would we then get armies of spam bots liking each other's posts ;-) ). Is this change feasible, or perhaps it's more effort than continuing the status quo of users reporting and admins deleting the spam.
Author:  DrStraw [ Tue Jun 24, 2014 4:55 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Idea for reducing spam
Why allow links in signatures at all?
Author:  Uberdude [ Tue Jun 24, 2014 5:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Idea for reducing spam
DrStraw wrote:
Why allow links in signatures at all?


For example ez4u has a link to his Sensei's Library homepage which seems a fine usage to me. Or topazg links to his Go teaching website and OGS. Not the end of the world if they can't of course but equally the spam isn't so annoying (yet) I feel it justifies removing useful features.
Author:  moyoaji [ Tue Jun 24, 2014 9:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Idea for reducing spam
This reminds me of the xkcd comic about checking for bots by seeing if they are capable of making constructive comments. The title text is: "And what about all the people who won't be able to join the community because they're terrible at making helpful and constructive co-- ...oh."

Jokes aside, this kind of a system could work. There could be a few situations where it causes problems, but I can't think of many.

If I remember correctly, I once joined a forum where you needed to make a certain number of posts before you could have any signature at all. Newbies just had no signature, and I was fine with that. I don't know how easy such a change would be using this forum's platform, but I'd imagine it's possible.
Author:  schultz [ Tue Jun 24, 2014 11:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Idea for reducing spam
I know vBulletin has some options for this, but don't know enough about phpBB to answer for this system. Would be interesting to see. If these options exist, I'd be all for making use of it.

Actually was a part of another forum community that had a small(ish) set of avatars, and you couldn't use your own custom avatar until you got to 5000 posts.

Edit - did some quick research, there is at least a basic amount of this management in place, but my fast searching only revealed info around giving access to different sub-forums. Didn't see anything right away about signature/avatar, etc. Didn't look too hard, though - so take it with a grain of salt.
Author:  Joaz Banbeck [ Wed Jun 25, 2014 7:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Idea for reducing spam
Uberdude wrote:
...Is this change feasible, or perhaps it's more effort than continuing the status quo of users reporting and admins deleting the spam.


It is certainly theoretically possible for someone who wants to go in and rewrite the code. But the users reporting works well right now. ( Thank, guys! ) So I'm inclined to leave well enough alone.
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