Bot spam is getting ridiculous

[Mendzia]

I've just checked the General Discussions on WoW part of the forum and this is the view:



I do not want to be a dck telling admins or mods what to do...
... but literally 6-7 first sites of it is a bot spamming random shit.
Maybe it is finally time to make a simple rule that you can't start a thread without 20-30 posts or something?
It is really going out of hand now...

[KOUNTERPARTS]

That wouldn't really fix the issue, having a minimum post count.


Bots will resort to randomly posting in random threads until they reach that count (they already do). It's actually quite funny; there will be a thread about a completely serious topic and all of a sudden a brand new account will post something like "thank you for sharing your experience " which is clearly a bot.


Not to mention a bot necro-ing a 10 year old thread for absolutely no reason at all but to say "this is awesome!"


Mods do a pretty decent job banning those accounts if people report them.


I understand the frustration about seeing threads spammed like that, but honestly, it's not something preventing you from accessing and using the website for its intended purpose. Perhaps inconvenient but certainly nothing to say is "out of hand" ... it's not inconvenient to click on "page 2, 3, 4, etc" to get to topics.

[XDurionX]

Yeah, having bots spam 30 nonsense postings before opening threads would be so much better.

[LoLcano]

Maybe a captcha code requirement before opening a thread ? or one of those "prove you are not bot" by clicking on picture of bus or w.e

[javierdsv]

Thank you for sharing your experience.

[Ealyssa]

I
Maybe it is finally time to make a simple rule that you can't start a thread without 20-30 posts or something?

lol you think bots care ? Its just code, it will spam randomly in threads too if that's needed. Making the forum way worse...

If there was an easy solution, it would already be in place.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Thank you for sharing your experience.

Great advice I will consider this

[Huntermyth]

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[LemonDemonGirl]

Maybe new accounts shouldn't be allowed to post links/ post until they do a Captcha?

[javierdsv]

Great advice I will consider this

Just kidding, but now on topic.

I don't really think the site makes enough money to keep good control over everything and everyone. In the end, it is us, the people that can help control it by reporting them.

[Orange Joe]

I've just checked the General Discussions on WoW part of the forum and this is the view:



I do not want to be a dck telling admins or mods what to do...
... but literally 6-7 first sites of it is a bot spamming random shit.
Maybe it is finally time to make a simple rule that you can't start a thread without 20-30 posts or something?
It is really going out of hand now...

Then they just spam posts in random threads. Problem not fixed.

[Tuor]

Maybe new accounts shouldn't be allowed to post links/ post until they do a Captcha?

They can't post any link untill they reach 10 posts, its has been like that since the days i registred here... 10 years ago.

Perhaps its a good time to take new measures, i don't know.

[Louz]

Mods are useless, only thing they do is send out infractions for "trolling" or enforce petty rules when they disagree with someone.

The site should have some sort of filter system added - based on users or keywords in title.
There have been some improvements since the new owner, but I just wonder why a feature like that wasn't among them.

[Soisoisoi]

Maybe it is finally time to make a simple rule that you can't start a thread without 20-30 posts or something?
It is really going out of hand now...

This used to be a thing (10 posts), I don't know why it went away? We could at least report those blatant posts in threads and then they don't get to spam their crap all over.

[Tziva]

As we have said in the other spambot threads (some just below this one), the reason we do not have a post count requirement for new threads is because then the bots spam in existing threads, which makes them much harder to both find and to take care of then when they make new threads. There is already a post count requirement in place to post links.

Additionally, much of this spam is done by real people rather than actual bots, which means they can get around many of our automated filters. Captcha (which afaik already is implemented) doesn't work much of the time.

We do have automated filters. We have a third party spam filter that catches the grand majority of these, and it is smart and learns from past threads so it can more quickly identify future ones. For every thread you see on the forum, there were probably 10+ caught on the back end. It is inevitable some get through, and we clean these up as fast as we can.

Report them when you see them, but otherwise all I can ask is that you be patient when they get through. They seldom sit on the board for more than a few hours (and most times much less than that), but because the mod team is volunteers, we can't ensure 24/7 coverage all the time. We don't like spam either and want it gone as quickly as possible.