Suggestion on the recent spam issue

[zaval]

Well, I didn't know that. I just don't want this forum disappeared, and looking at titles - "russian fat women", "grandfather and granddaughter", "taboo porn", "incest" etc (unfortunately I do possess russian), makes me feel this forum is about to disappear.

[iansjack]

It's a shame that the owner seems to have lost interest in the site. It is fast becoming a less pleasant place to visit and, at this rate, I can see it atrophying.

All things must pass.

[pistachio]

Perhaps we can organize a group migration to a new server for the moment? I wish Chase would answer his emails... has he been on IRC at all?

[~]

I could help as a moderator to delete spam/users. I spend most of the day browsing posts. I would delete it within minutes or seconds in many cases.

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You could make an auto-delete subforum.

Add a custom script with a few keywords and alphabet letters to filter. Add more filter terms over time.

Also, look at how many new users post a lot of links, or a single link with or without <A href> tags. That can also be moved.

The subforum can be hidden only for moderators.

Then they can browse it, move valid posts to other subforums, and let the rest of hidden posts to auto-delete.

[zhiayang]

It's a shame that the owner seems to have lost interest in the site. It is fast becoming a less pleasant place to visit and, at this rate, I can see it atrophying.

All things must pass.

): I hope that doesn't happen. This place used to be very active a few years ago, I wonder what happened, honestly. Is IRC the last bastion of osdev?

[klange]

I could help as a moderator to delete spam/users. I spend most of the day browsing posts. I would delete it within minutes or seconds in many cases.

Only chase can add new mods.

You could make an auto-delete subforum.

Only chase can add new forums.

Add a custom script with a few keywords and alphabet letters to filter. Add more filter terms over time.

We could build a bot that automates deletion using an existing moderator's accounts, but I worry about false positives. We need to ban the bots or they just keep posting, sometimes immediately after we've deleted their existing posts.

[Candy]

I've sent Chase a PM about this and he hasn't read it in a week.

[~]

I've sent Chase a PM about this and he hasn't read it in a week.

Spammers could even be targeting Chase to meet himself, and he must know so he isn't frequent here.

I know because I almost got killed in a street by 6 that looked like primary/secondary school students. I'm sure it's because of my website (190.53.102.175). This sort of spammers that figure how to find high-complexity development sites are truly targeting the administrators for some reason, if possible to get rid of them like Pat Villani and Terry Davis (even Steve Jobs more or less indirectly).

It's a matter of not going to dangerous places, or surely you know better ways to avoid such assailants with special interest in technology professionals (they have trained themselves to work competently in the industry and in the most important enterprise names so they are complex).

[pistachio]

~, what you are claiming is complete lunacy! There is no-one targeting Chase in real life in order to shutdown the OSDev forum... I can almost certainly tell you that no one is targeting you in person for your website either, seeing as it has a proclivity to fail and not even deliver the page. If you are genuinely being followed and threatened, please speak to the authorities, but at the same time do not act on a belief that sounds rather unsubstantiated.

As for the site, it may be time for another administrator to be created to ensure this kind of situation is resolved... Is there not a trusted moderator?

[DavidCooper]

Chase will fix things eventually. In the meantime, we must help out as best we can by not clicking on spammers' links and by not even reading their threads. Keep the view counts as low as possible so that they know that they're wasting their time and money.

On another issue, there are many conditions which adventurous programmers can suffer from such as autism, bipolar disorder and chronic social ineptitude which are likely well represented on this forum, and we should be careful not to inadvertently abuse such people. They frequently make useful contributions and they are common in this field because they are more driven to do this weird kind of work than ordinary members of the population. Embrace the diversity.

[pistachio]

Quite right, I apologize for not considering the suchlike. I mean no disrespect, though my post was quite aggressive. I had not considered the possibility and will take it in subsequent posts.

Apologies and Best,

[chase]

I'll even pay for a solution but I need help figuring out what to do because I research this every year and don't come up with good options.

I don't want to require payment or accounts with other services (other than email)

I'd be okay with new users being restricted but I'd prefer the burden of approving new posts not to fall on a small number of moderators that sometimes get busy.

PM me suggestions for changing the captcha since we don't want the new answer to be public. It needs to be something people new to OS development can figure out. That probably means most people written spam bots can figure it out also but at this point I think our captcha answer has been added to a list.

[notchase]

Testing making a post from a new user account.

[loonie]

Don't think its average spammers. Could be targeting somewhat. Watching their struggle. Maybe google captcha with pictures will help?

I have witnessed during certain periods that its not first time happening - you guys say its worst this time.

New user postings need to go into separate forum.
If user answered enough tricky questions (not necessary contributed) then user can post everywhere.
This can be investigated over time by moderators, not in real time, need to read crap but easy.

Introducing themselves as far as posting links to so called their projects is seriously misleading tactics.
This is old one of mine https://github.com/geppy-os - somewhat buggy and raw design but working in many situations.
Oh, I forgot password for this one.

People who answer their post - most freshly registered? Or a seasoned user gave an answer?

NEW USER FORUM please.

I was being facetious. No one is attacking OS developers, because OS development for anything other than Windows, MacOS, or Linux is of zero real-world significance, and no sane human thinks that is going to change in the foreseeable future (not that any sane people come to this group to begin with).

Nope it not an attack in this "forum" situation - its a noise that will go away eventually for the forum at least.

[chase]

New users now need to have their first post approved by a moderator. They also can't send PMs/DMs until they've had a post approved so that should eliminate the PM spam.

I looked at reCaptcha and spam prevention for phpBB in general. A Q&A captcha still seems to be a recommended practice. I think our answer must have been added to a dataset for spammers so I've changed out the question. If it works then we'll just need to rotate the question on a regular basis. If it doesn't then I'll need to update the board to a more recent version of phpBB to make use of reCaptcha.