BitShares Forum

Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: Riverhead on September 11, 2014, 01:55:02 am

Title: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: Riverhead on September 11, 2014, 01:55:02 am
So now that we're gaining a lot of attention we're going to be increasingly attracting the attention of the script kiddies.


Thoughts on preventing us getting swamped with this sort of thing? I am loath to use a newbie thread you need to somehow graduate from like bitcointalk (been a member over a year and still can't post lol).


Our spammer tonight is going to be the first of many. I'm looking at you, Bitsapphire :) .
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: donkeypong on September 11, 2014, 02:35:20 am
We need an active moderator who takes the monitoring seriously. And maybe we need a team of watchers, trusted members who are empowered to report questionable posts. Once flagged by someone with this authority, the post would go down and the poster would be unable to post unless/until a moderator's review deemed the message okay. Any watcher abusing this power to prevent the free interchange of ideas and open debate would lose that privilege.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: onceuponatime on September 11, 2014, 02:39:05 am
We need an active moderator who takes the monitoring seriously. And maybe we need a team of watchers, trusted members who are empowered to report questionable posts. Once flagged by someone with this authority, the post would go down and the poster would be unable to post unless/until a moderator's review deemed the message okay. Any watcher abusing this power to prevent the free interchange of ideas and open debate would lose that privilege.

I spotted the spammer after his first post and reported to Moderator and asked him to be banned. I did the same in several other threads as he continued his spamming. But he still managed to spam 42 threads, and STILL hasn't been banned (although he has now logged off). It appears that there is no active Moderation.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: rysgc on September 11, 2014, 02:42:42 am
Maybe some voting system would do, if someone receives x bad votes within y time he will be banned automatically for 24 hours orso, if he do it again ban for life. Kinda hard to have it monitored here around the clock, but well it's about time that it will indeed.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: donkeypong on September 11, 2014, 02:45:15 am
Maybe some voting system would do, if someone receives x bad votes within y time he will be banned automatically for 24 hours orso, if he do it again ban for life. Kinda hard to have it monitored here around the clock, but well it's about time that it will indeed.

That's why we need a 'neighborhood watch', so to speak. Either get enough mods for round-the-clock coverage or else empower a small army of us to keep the place clean.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: Riverhead on September 11, 2014, 02:46:48 am
Bans won't work. Did you see his username? It was script generated. For all we know it's just a script running on a cron to hit us daily, weekly, or monthly.


Active moderation and trusted delegates would be the easiest solution. If it's not a script generated name we could pseudo ban them. Basically it's like a global ignore. They can still post and read posts but no one can see anything they do. They do not know this has been done to them. It's a particularly nasty thing to do to a real person but a spammer isn't really a person.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: donkeypong on September 11, 2014, 02:47:43 am
Bans won't work. Did you see his username? It was script generated. For all we know it's just a script running on a cron to hit us daily, weekly, or monthly.


Active moderation and trusted delegates would be the easiest solution. If it's not a script generated name we could pseudo ban them. Basically it's like a global ignore. They can still post and read posts but no one can see anything they do. They do not know this has been done to them. It's a particularly nasty thing to do to a real person but a spammer isn't really a person.

Sounds good to me.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: rysgc on September 11, 2014, 02:50:44 am
Well, then a simple captcha will suffice as well, maybe those new fancy ones (yeah they do get broken by paid services as well). Bound together with a seconds-before-next-post property should be ok for newcomers so they can post like ones an hour/day until they mature. So many ways to solve this but i think the timing between posts is the most important property on which to judge for newcomers.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: Riverhead on September 11, 2014, 02:53:09 am
Well, then a simple captcha will suffice as well, maybe those new fancy ones (yeah they do get broken by paid services as well). Bound together with a seconds-before-next-post property should be ok for newcomers so they can post like ones an hour/day until they mature. So many ways to solve this but i think the timing between posts is the most important property on which to judge for newcomers.


That's a fantastic idea.  Perhaps that until you reach Full Member or whatever the first "rank" is after a hundred posts or so.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: tonyk on September 11, 2014, 02:54:12 am
Bans won't work. Did you see his username? It was script generated. For all we know it's just a script running on a cron to hit us daily, weekly, or monthly.


Active moderation and trusted delegates would be the easiest solution. If it's not a script generated name we could pseudo ban them. Basically it's like a global ignore. They can still post and read posts but no one can see anything they do. They do not know this has been done to them. It's a particularly nasty thing to do to a real person but a spammer isn't really a person.

Wow, that is so cool!

On a second thought, I am pretty sure some moderators will be happy to see me banned/ignored, so I do not know :)
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: onceuponatime on September 11, 2014, 02:57:17 am
Bans won't work. Did you see his username? It was script generated. For all we know it's just a script running on a cron to hit us daily, weekly, or monthly.


Active moderation and trusted delegates would be the easiest solution. If it's not a script generated name we could pseudo ban them. Basically it's like a global ignore. They can still post and read posts but no one can see anything they do. They do not know this has been done to them. It's a particularly nasty thing to do to a real person but a spammer isn't really a person.

I am on the forum a lot, so I know that this spammer has been banned the last several days in a row (under newly created user names). He just changes his username, logs on and spams 42 threads and then leaves, usually before being banned. Back the next day with 42 spams of the same message (message hasn't changed one iota since first day).
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: oco101 on September 11, 2014, 03:00:44 am
Seriously why is this spam staying there that long ?  bitsapphire ....come on this is ridicule .......
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: serejandmyself on September 11, 2014, 06:20:21 am
So now that we're gaining a lot of attention we're going to be increasingly attracting the attention of the script kiddies.


Thoughts on preventing us getting swamped with this sort of thing? I am loath to use a newbie thread you need to somehow graduate from like bitcointalk (been a member over a year and still can't post lol).


Our spammer tonight is going to be the first of many. I'm looking at you, Bitsapphire :) .

But you have to understand that its part of becoming "pop music" (an analogy). I mean if you become the beatles then you will have fans waiting you wherever you go and nothing you can do about it. You can get sunglasses, get dressed diffently, go other ways etc.

And you know what? Its not actually so bad. This spam is kinda healthy. I mean i do agree that i dont want to see 1500 topics every day asking "how do i register" or "where is it best to store my btsx". BUT that is part of becoming popular to the masses. We wil have to just deal with it and my advise it to moderate, but not to overexagurate. As even a scrypt kid that you ban out of here can bring 5 new kids if he gets interested in btsx. 
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: tonyk on September 11, 2014, 06:28:49 am
So now that we're gaining a lot of attention we're going to be increasingly attracting the attention of the script kiddies.


Thoughts on preventing us getting swamped with this sort of thing? I am loath to use a newbie thread you need to somehow graduate from like bitcointalk (been a member over a year and still can't post lol).


Our spammer tonight is going to be the first of many. I'm looking at you, Bitsapphire :) .

But you have to understand that its part of becoming "pop music" (an analogy). I mean if you become the beatles then you will have fans waiting you wherever you go and nothing you can do about it. You can get sunglasses, get dressed diffently, go other ways etc.

And you know what? Its not actually so bad. This spam is kinda healthy. I mean i do agree that i dont want to see 1500 topics every day asking "how do i register" or "where is it best to store my btsx". BUT that is part of becoming popular to the masses. We wil have to just deal with it and my advise it to moderate, but not to overexagurate. As even a scrypt kid that you ban out of here can bring 5 new kids if he gets interested in btsx.
I do not think they are talking about that here. I do not know if the threads are already gone, but somebody posted like 50 same name threads, in all kinds of sub-forums, selling BTSX for whatever price, in just a matter of minutes.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: serejandmyself on September 11, 2014, 06:31:54 am
So now that we're gaining a lot of attention we're going to be increasingly attracting the attention of the script kiddies.


Thoughts on preventing us getting swamped with this sort of thing? I am loath to use a newbie thread you need to somehow graduate from like bitcointalk (been a member over a year and still can't post lol).


Our spammer tonight is going to be the first of many. I'm looking at you, Bitsapphire :) .

But you have to understand that its part of becoming "pop music" (an analogy). I mean if you become the beatles then you will have fans waiting you wherever you go and nothing you can do about it. You can get sunglasses, get dressed diffently, go other ways etc.

And you know what? Its not actually so bad. This spam is kinda healthy. I mean i do agree that i dont want to see 1500 topics every day asking "how do i register" or "where is it best to store my btsx". BUT that is part of becoming popular to the masses. We wil have to just deal with it and my advise it to moderate, but not to overexagurate. As even a scrypt kid that you ban out of here can bring 5 new kids if he gets interested in btsx.
I do not think they are talking about that here. I do not know if the threads are already gone, but somebody posted like 50 same name threads, in all kinds of sub-forums, selling BTSX for whatever price, in just a matter of minutes.

Oh.... well i guess my bad.... i didnt see those. In what i wrote, by moderate moderation i meant deleting those kind of threads  :D
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: luckybit on September 11, 2014, 09:33:25 am
So now that we're gaining a lot of attention we're going to be increasingly attracting the attention of the script kiddies.


Thoughts on preventing us getting swamped with this sort of thing? I am loath to use a newbie thread you need to somehow graduate from like bitcointalk (been a member over a year and still can't post lol).


Our spammer tonight is going to be the first of many. I'm looking at you, Bitsapphire :) .


The solutions to spam:

1) Adopt KeyID for forum logins.
2) Use reputation and microtransactions to stop spammers.
2.1) Let people pay a small fee to post in certain sections of the forum (like a penny a post) if they are not known members of the community.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: Riverhead on September 11, 2014, 10:55:56 am
I like the idea of a captcha for anyone that isn't a "Full Member".
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: xeroc on September 11, 2014, 10:59:28 am
having keyIDs linked to a keyhotee profile gives us a 'reputation' level already .. so we can use that one and up/down vote people
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: serejandmyself on September 11, 2014, 10:59:51 am
I like the idea of a captcha for anyone that isn't a "Full Member".

I think youre onto something here. But it should be for lets say for over 5 posts per day untill you are a fell member. I.e. if youre a newbe no captcha for first 5 posts. Also maybe a time frame for posting until you are a full member.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: Riverhead on September 11, 2014, 11:15:36 am
I like the idea of a captcha for anyone that isn't a "Full Member".

I think youre onto something here. But it should be for lets say for over 5 posts per day untill you are a fell member. I.e. if youre a newbe no captcha for first 5 posts. Also maybe a time frame for posting until you are a full member.


I think there's a limit to how complex the rules can be with the stock forum without some serious customization.


I like the KeyID but that's a lot of hoops for a new user to jump through who may already be struggling with the technology.
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: xeroc on September 11, 2014, 11:20:24 am
in the VERY end, we could integrate the forum into keyhotee/keyid/BitShares and have it as a 'advanced' troll box ... just without the 'trolling' :-)
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: Riverhead on September 11, 2014, 11:25:48 am
in the VERY end, we could integrate the forum into keyhotee/keyid/BitShares and have it as a 'advanced' troll box ... just without the 'trolling' :-)


 +5% +5% . As much as I hate the trollbox on BTC-e it can be entertaining and you can't have a circus without screaming kids. I think it'd really increase volume. Also, it should be really easy to turn off :).
Title: Re: SPAM - A cost of success
Post by: GaltReport on September 11, 2014, 11:26:18 am
I've faced this many times.  Need Captcha on registration, enough active moderators and the ability to do IP bans as a last resort.