During the past few months we have had several bouts with different kinds of SPAM. To begin with we had a period of blatant, random SPAM. More recently, we have been seeing a lot of annoying posts from Chinese retailer shills. I have been hesitating to deal with it because I wasn't sure what the best method would be. For one thing, I don't want to be a dictatorial moderator that deletes posts and users at my own whim. And I also want to reduce administrative overhead for myself. But at the same time, we need a way to hinder troublesome users from causing mischief by banning our legitimate users' posts out of spite. I think I have implemented a pretty good solution now that addresses these concerns:
Look for the Mark as SPAM link at the bottom-right of every post. A single click should make it change state to Un-mark as SPAM. If you accidentally marked it as SPAM, click it again to revert it back. If any post gets marked by 3 users as SPAM, it will automatically disappear after refreshing the page. I can still retrieve as administrator if there is some sort of mistake.
Every time a user's posts get marked as SPAM, his SPAM Level goes down. You can see a user's SPAM Level to the left of any post below his username. If a user has been complained about 5 times, the SPAM Level drops to -7, and two more conditions kick in:
If: the user has made less than 15 posts
Or: The user has been registered for less than 31 days,
Then the user will be blocked. On the other hand, spiteful users will not be able to block legitimate users this way, because we expect to be able to filter out spammers within 31 days and only the legitimate users will remain.
Those are the basic principles of the new system. Please keep in mind that this not Digg or Slashdot-- the SPAM button is not meant for modding down people you don't agree with or just personally don't like. Rather it is intended for marking posts by users who contribute neither meaningful questions nor helpful answers to the forum. It would also be courteous to the Chinese retailers who participate here to allow them to post their legitimate flashlight product updates to the appropriate forum (I'll work on that later), so please don't mark a post as SPAM just because it comes from a Chinese retailer. However, a Chinese retailer who posts irrelevant products (such as smartphones, teddy bears, etc.) could be marked as SPAM. Also shameless shills whose first post is nothing more than a plug for their company could also be marked as SPAM.
So let's all try to dig through the forums and mark any legitimate SPAM posts we find, and they will disappear pretty soon. Please note that the 30 day user ban limit is temporarily lifted so that we can get any spammers that slipped through before we implemented this system. But I'll put it back in place soon so that none of you get erroneously blocked. Please do let me know what you think of the system, and also please advise about any bugs.
One thought has just struck me. I'd also get folk to make a certain number of posts ?2, ?3, ?5 before they get to moderate. Otherwise some spammers - or just idiots - are going to cause problems sooner or later.
This sounds like a good system. Hopefully no one will try to abuse it.
This is not really related to the topic, but I was wondering if it was possible to add an option to ignore specific users. I hate to use it, but sometimes it becomes a necessary evil.
Sounds great, thanks. Also, I would just like to say that I think you do a great job of adminning this place. I visit a lot of places regularly, but I have more posts here in the past month, than I have made everywhere else in the past 2 years. That's a definite sign that you are doing something right! :)
brted will be dubbed as "sharpshooter" from here on out. ;)
Nice! I'm glad it's working. It's not fair for me though, as my administrator permissions apparently still let me see the un-published post that you guys just sent off on a gurney.
Is there a way we can add a feature that shows all posts for specific members? Sometimes I'd like to check out or read up on a specific members posts but there is no easy way to find all of them. Just a suggestion when or if you have the time. Thank you sir! :)