Oh yes the inability to search for a members posts is on thing common to forums that I keep missing.
There may be a flaw in the current implementation. Wiky was spam level 2. I marked their post in here http://budgetlightforum.cz.cc/node/383 as spam. Later I noticed their infamous http://budgetlightforum.cz.cc/node/430 again and I marked that as spam. They went up to level 4. While writing this I remembered their second post in thread 430 where they 'decided' on EB and marked that as spam. They went up to level 5 and are now banned. From the description above I'm not sure if this is intentional.
With this system a spiteful user can cause any new user (well any user at the current time but that doesn't matter) with 5 posts or more to be banned. Of course if a user marks several posts which aren't spam as spam just because they come from a user who did spam once, let alone if none of the posts can be considered spam then this user can be told off or even banned themselves but it may be better to limit the number of 'spam points' a single user can contribute (they can still mark as many posts as they want as spam from the same user) if not 1 then a maximum of 2. Or perhaps over time (like 1 a day perhaps?)
BTW I hope no one minds what I did I don't think it's really abusive since all wiky's posts I marked were clearly spam.
You killed Wiky? I hardly knew him. Do not mess with Nil! I'm going to have to relinquish my sharpshooter title, which I only had for a few hours.
Please tell me chinahandy's a forum regular having a bit of fun and not a serious spammer...
He sure did pick the wrong thread to post spam into. Ha! This is epic.
Haha, he must have a sizeable set of balls or just not be very intelligent.
Can I take my first shot at him?
Be my guest. It's not really that surprising I guess, these sort of spammers tend to function as human bots. For these sort of ones, they may not understand English very well if at all and don't tend to read anything that's said even if they do. Just randomly pick (in this case probably active) topics and post. In another thread the same spammer even posted with a German subject and Chinese comments.
Noticed today that some -8 spammer (Actually shill or sockpuppet would be more accurate designators. Scumbag would be better still) was still visible. The disappearing trick seems not to be working for some reason though it was earlier.
Hang on, someone’s marked one of my incredibly informative and well written posts as Spam!
Don, you didn’t pre-empt my attack did you?
I was only kidding about testing it on you.
Unless....can you tell if you've marked your own posts as spam.....perhaps accidentally? 
It wasn't me - at least not in this thread since you get the option to undo it and it isn't there. That said, I spent a very maudlin evening last night reminiscing with friends about grannies. Rather a lot of whisky was involved so anything is possible.
Odd - it is back to 0 now. Wasn't me then...
I think some script may have kicked off - at least Mr.Admin isn't around just now so I imagine some sort of cleanup has run.
Just checking Don.
Hmm I just went through the everbvying thread and un-Spammed some of the posts I'd previously marked and my Spam level has now returned to 0, it was -2.
I know Nil suggested something like it but is there a limit to how many posts you can mark as Spam before it counts against yourself?
I don't think so. Not that I have any knowledge of how it works or is run beyond what I've read here.
Our latest spammer pknike. Go on everyone, shoot him down.
Hmmm . . . well I marked both of his posts and got him to -3 and then -4. Now he is at -6. I wonder if all 5 have to be on one post? Or maybe he'll get caught in the next update.
The post from the spammer on this very thread we were laughing have disappeared so clearly something is working. My understanding is there are two different things:
1) If someone gets -5 they are banned so can't post anymore (well later only if their account is 30 days or newer et al). Their posts stay however.
2) If a post gets 5 people marking it as spam it disappears (this would also mean the person is banned if they meet the conditions since they'll have 5 points).
So posts hanging around from a banned user is understandable, it just means not enough people have marked that particular post as spam. Making all posts of a banned user disappear would I presume be possible but it would mean if a spammer did happen to leave some non-spammy posts, they'll be gone too and a banned user will effectively instantly disappear (well it will depend on how long the forum takes to update but not really the point). In fact at the current time it means I could technically make a anyone of you vanish from the forum if I can find 5 of your posts.
My suggestion is people can mark as many posts from one user as spam and these will count to removing them but only one will count to get them banned. However getting 5 users to mark a post a spam for them to disappear is not working at least with our current user level and is perhaps a bit unnecessary. Maybe something like -5 ban, -10 all posts are gone. Or more complicated may be for a banned user only one or two mark as spam is enough to kill it. Of course may be 5 unique users marking at least one post (same post or not) from a user should be enough to make them be banned and disappear.
Hi guys, thanks for the feedback!
Basically, it looks like the system is working per the specifications so far. You are correct in your observations that it could still be possible to see posts by a user who has a Spam Level below -5. This is because the user ban is based on total number of all posts byt that user marked as Spam. So if he posts two Spams one after another, and then 3 people shoot down the first comment and 4 people shoot down the second comment, you will still see both posts and he will have a rating of -7. On the other hand, removal of Spam posts occurs on a per-post level. So yes, as some have observed, each individual Spam post needs to be marked 5 times to disappear.
Nil Einne makes a good point that we might not have enough active patrollers around here to get Spammers quickly. So I made a bit a compromise to the rules: It now takes a Spam Level of -7 to get banned, but only 3 shots only any single post to get it removed. Again, these rules are flexible and easy to change, so we'll modify them as we go.
Thanks to all for helping with this, please keep the suggestions coming!
I'd put some kind of conditions that if a post is marked as SPAM, but upon inspection it's not the person reporting the post as SPAM has a "charge-back" so to speak done on them.... EG: Their post is marked as spam x2. Such goes against them for abusing the system.
Is that in there somewhere? (I'm tired right now, please disregard if it is.)
I mention this as several years ago on the Laptop boards people where buying laptops thru Costco, with NO INTENTION of keeping them only to use them for a class- then returning them.
(Which is not right, and costs me money in the form of higher prices -Costco due to such went from UNLIMITED on the time frame to return a computer, to 1-year, then to 6-months, then 90-days... something like that due to the abuse. )
One guy bragged about it openly, I called him out on it and the next thing I knew I had a bunch of Negatives against my feedback rating (or whater it was called) He with thru every post I had made and knocked down my feedback rating.
Hi there WeAreNotAlone, thanks for the very useful suggestion! This is an interesting idea, and I *think* that our system here will allow that with a bit of tweaking. I might try to implement that when I have time. But on a short term basis, don't forget that users who have been registered for 31 days or more without being blocked are immune to banning. I mainly intended the "SPAM level" as an indicator to new users that they are annoying people and could end up being blocked soon, not as an overall "User rating". Any legitimate user here should have a SPAM level of 0, that's all. But now that you mention it, I could also add the condition that in order for a post and a user to get marked down, he must be registered for less than 31 days. More established users would be immune to SPAM flagging. That's one option.
Thanks again for your suggestions, please keep them coming.
Any legitimate user here should have a SPAM level of 0
Suddenly I saw my level is -1. Did I make an offensive post? That's strange. Is it possible to find out, which of my post was considered as spam?.
Hi there Oldienea, I don't really have a good way of tracking who flags what as spam. But in your case it very well could have just been a mistake. You're not at all offensive, and we're glad to have you aboard, so I reset you to 0.
Thanks for checking!