A saucy question

[Fancy Lime]

There was a bit of this discussion in the Members Only section. Several people have suggested just banning the one offending account, which I assume is exactly what the moderators do in such a case. Shout-out to them for doing a great job! However, I'm afraid that only solves one of many incarnations of the same problem. I have no statistical data and have only been active here for a few months but I have seen at least three such attacks (the other two were caught by the moderators more quickly). The other two attacks came from many different accounts, each posting only one or two messages, so banning a specific account would not have helped. If I remember correctly one of them was also in Russian, the other in "English" (as according to Google translate, by the sound of it). So auto-detecting and auto-banning Non-English would not work either, I guess.

I would like to have a function in the forum that allows members of a certain status (like >1000 posts or something along those lines) to tag posts as spam or otherwise abusive. If a post accumulates more than, lets say 10 "Spam Tags" it is hidden and automatically reported to the moderators. They can then ultimately decide to either delete it or reinstate it. I obviously have no idea if the engine on which this forum runs has this feature or if the feature even exists in any such engine. If not, I hope someone makes that. I think this may help catching these attacks earlier and take some workload off the moderators. Of course this would only work in a generally well-behaved forum like this. In the more troll-infested ones it would probably lead to super annoying ban-battles real quick.

On the bright side: We got some pretty nice pedal naming ideas out of it... Yeah, you're right, it still was annoying as f***
Andy

[PRR]

"Massive assault"? One dweeb pasting a dozen messages?

Preventing: some forums ask an on-topic question in the registration process. "Who makes better guitar amplifiers, Fender or Chrysler?". However the fuzz-racket has grown too large, and many valued newbies here don't have broad experience.

[Fancy Lime]

I doubt that these things are posted by an actual person. Way too time consuming for such an off-target attack. More likely a bot net, which also would not be thrown by simple multiple choice riddles. It can just try again and again under different names, thousands of tries per second. Ultimately there is no way to completely keep this from happening, it's always a race between the spammer and the spammed. One of the inconveniences of the internet with which we pay for the great conveniences. Imagine we had to exchange schematics by actual mail. I mean: by Pony Express, which incidentally would be a great name for a hot-rodded My Little Pony overdrive, wouldn't it?

Andy

[EBK]

My Little Pwnee

it's always a race between the spammer and the spammed.

It's a race to avoid becoming "My Little Pwnee".

[stallik]

"Massive assault"? One dweeb pasting a dozen messages?

Preventing: some forums ask an on-topic question in the registration process. "Who makes better guitar amplifiers, Fender or Chrysler?". However the fuzz-racket has grown too large, and many valued newbies here don't have broad experience.

Well said..... is the answer Chrysler?

[Mark Hammer]

"Massive assault"? One dweeb pasting a dozen messages?

Preventing: some forums ask an on-topic question in the registration process. "Who makes better guitar amplifiers, Fender or Chrysler?". However the fuzz-racket has grown too large, and many valued newbies here don't have broad experience.

As I recall, it was more than a dozen. But post-counts aside, when a handful of spam posts occur, it is a minor nuisance but no more than that.  The problem occurs when a much larger number push recent posts to the 2nd screen, such that folks who might need assistance with something pressing simply don't get seen, because they are way down the posts on the second page, or maybe even further.

Admittedly, that is a "problem" largely because of the format of the forum.  I don't personally have any objection to it whatsoever, but the location of posts, based on recency, means that if someone does throw a barrelful of spam at the forum, anything evenmoments older gets bumped way down.  And that's what poses risk to those hoping for assistance,

I'm not knowledgeable enough in the ways of bots, internet security, and the like to be able to make any cogent suggestions here.  I'm strictly limited to identifying the nature of the havoc caused.

As for imposing strong English-only requirements, I'll simply note that this is a pleasingly international forum and people use a variety of first languages here; particularly when they have a harder time expressing themselves clearly in English and someone of the same language is able to respond.  It's actually nice to folks connect that way, even though many of us get left out.

[amptramp]

If you have bots signing in automatically, a captcha code may be able to weed them out.  If the forum allows guest posting (as some do), this should be turned off.

[Rob Strand]

As for imposing strong English-only requirements, I'll simply note that this is a pleasingly international forum and people use a variety of first languages here; particularly when they have a harder time expressing themselves clearly in English and someone of the same language is able to respond.  It's actually nice to folks connect that way, even though many of us get left out.

Agreed, enforcing English would be unnecessarily hostile.
If we got junk from an English speaking poster we wouldn't be stopping English.
It's the action that's the problem not the language.
it's been stomped out, so job done!

[Marcos - Munky]

My Little Pwnee

This is a great pedal name!

As for imposing strong English-only requirements, I'll simply note that this is a pleasingly international forum and people use a variety of first languages here; particularly when they have a harder time expressing themselves clearly in English and someone of the same language is able to respond.  It's actually nice to folks connect that way, even though many of us get left out.

Agreed.