Suggestion for the moderators

[Tomstoy2]

Ever since Thanksgiving, it seems the forum has been under attack daily by people selling phones, services, appliances or just spammers. I don't know the answer to eleminate this, however, this may be a solution?

To prevent this, perhaps it would be possible for new "members" to hold their first post for review before posting? Seems it would give you guys a chance to examine if it's a legitimate person wanting to benefit/contribute from this great forum, or not.

As I said, I don't know what the true answer here is, just know that what we have now is not working.

I just don't believe that I'm the only one who is getting tired of these guys pedaling/fleecing their wares here.

Perhaps you guys already have a plan?

Just a thought,,,,,,

 

[nicwilke]

Great idea. Have their 1st 10 posts moderated.

 

[kloner]

I have a forum and we went to video captcha at the bottom of the registration page, but they were still gettig in so we went to moderater approved before they can post. You search the email used and 99% of the time that's the tip off, then if we search the ip it almost always comes up as spammers. This site would be tough having so many international users, but it'd still work. I got an IT guy that uses the place to handle it for me. He blows me away with the accuracy

 

[Bartman]

thanks for the suggestions guys. we may purge the member list of all users with zero posts so far. a lot of times the spammers will establish user accounts and then go back at a later date and post spam from them. we've also switched to a new supposedly bot-proof recaptcha image as of last night so we're working on it. i've tried reviewing all new members but that's very time consuming and when I"m bogged down new users have to wait for me to approve them.

i'm in discussions with my web developer so it isn't being ignored and i apologize for the problems the spammers cause. vbulletin is the best forums software out there but it isn't perfect so we work with what we have.

bart

 

[gadgetkeith]

you could always just disable the posting of links etc for new members till they reach say 10 or so posts

as we all know most of the time new members will introduce themselves and ask a few questions here and there in the first few posts etc

before they need to post links

this should discourage the spammers a little

just an idea

keith

 

[Bartman]

it looks like blogging will be by request instead of available automatically to everyone. for someone to be given access to blogging they will have to have a certain amount of activity established at the site. the human verification has been improved a little so that will help but the lack of effective moderation options in the blogs leaves me few choices.

we're still discussing options but this seems to be the most likely outcome that balances site security and the workload for site moderation.

bart

 

[DucktileMedia]

What about those of us who are looking for a good deal on a phone. I returned my iPhone 5 after hearing I could get 2 for 1.

 

[Tomstoy2]

Hehehe, I don't know buddy, maybe Best Buy?

Bartman, glad to here it's upsetting you guys as well. What a frustrating experience it must be. As they say, "no good deed goes unpunished."

 

[daskim]

We manually approve all new members at the forums where I moderate.

They still manage to get through occasionally.

It's almost impossible to stop completely.

iPhone spam, credit card dumbs, downloadable movies -- you name it.

 

[Macsgrafs]

Even worse is finding the same spammer poted 4 or so threads, you click on report & then have to wait a minute before you can report the next thread
So glad I havent owned a mobile since 2001.

Ross