how is this acceptable?

[Temp name]

Could you show us 1-2 of the 100000 times you claim this has been addressed?

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ing-ridiculous
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2569607-spam
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2570095-Spam-Duty
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...m-and-Mod-Duty

On the first page of the S&F forum

[Egomaniac]

Could you show us 1-2 of the 100000 times you claim this has been addressed?

You can just click on the suggestions & feedback and see on the first page 5 other times this issue has been addressed.

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https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ing-ridiculous
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2569607-spam
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/2570095-Spam-Duty
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...m-and-Mod-Duty

On the first page of the S&F forum

beat me to it

[Temp name]

These are all poster complaints, I was asking for actual moderator references that address the problem.

In my eyes it’s a problem that can be addressed with a delay between posts. Asking for human intervention against spam is costly but the ways exist to improve the situation. That is if we actually want to improve the situation.

From the first thread I linked, here's a Tziva post (which goes into a lot of detail): https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post52641983
2nd thread, a Radux post: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post52643388
3rd thread, Chaud: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post52649561
And 4th thread was a duplicate of the 3rd thread

Did you even read the threads I linked? because 3/4ths of them had a mod post.

Here's another post from Tziva, also complaining that they say the same thing every time this exact topic gets brought up: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post52001993
And another one: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post51976773

[C20]

I will never understand how spamming such garbage is fun for some people. They must be thinking themselves hillarious while everyone around them just wants to punch them in the face.

Nope, it's companies that are paid to hire people specifically to try and spam as many 'cheap meds' ads on as many websites as they can. They pay them peanuts, but in countries when unemployment means you might end up dead because you can't afford to eat, it's not really an option they can turn down. It doesn't make it right, but it's not some mischievous little kid sat on his iPad creating junk posts just because he's trying to prove to his other friends that he's some 'l33t hax0r'.

As a former mod many years ago, the spam has never really changed. Some of the core people that used to run the technical aspects of the site moved onto other things, so the forum setup has remained mostly the same from a technology PoV, which means the same problems still exist. Moderating it out of the way before people see it is impossible, so it comes down to people being responsible and making sure they don't try to piece together the links.

[Daedius]

New accounts shouldn't be allowed to create threads if they're below a certain post threshold, or a time frame.

[Lubefist]

If only those bots would mention anything about politics, human rights etc. the mods would be all over that shit.

The moderation of this site is the biggest joke I've ever seen and I've been in thrift shop groups moderated by power tripping middle aged ladies.

[Egomaniac]

New accounts shouldn't be allowed to create threads if they're below a certain post threshold, or a time frame.

As the mods have repeatedly said...all that would accomplish is to drive the spammers into existing threads.

[God Save The King]

These are all poster complaints, I was asking for actual moderator references that address the problem.

In my eyes it’s a problem that can be addressed with a delay between posts. Asking for human intervention against spam is costly but the ways exist to improve the situation. That is if we actually want to improve the situation.

Scroll to the bottom of each of those threads and you will see a moderator response. Did not bother reading them, did you? (excluding the 4th thread, which was closed as a duplicated)

[Daedius]

As the mods have repeatedly said...all that would accomplish is to drive the spammers into existing threads.

Then more needs to be done at curbing them at account creation; Email confirmation, unique questions alongside the CAPCHA, etc.


And I suppose hire more volunteers to do basic mod'ing of the forums, as these spam bots typically come out when Americans are asleep.

[Egomaniac]

And I suppose hire more volunteers to do basic mod'ing of the forums, as these spam bots typically come out when Americans are asleep.

based on what Moana Lisa said earlier...it looks like that's exactly the approach they are trying right now.

[Cerus]

Then more needs to be done at curbing them at account creation; Email confirmation, unique questions alongside the CAPCHA, etc.


And I suppose hire more volunteers to do basic mod'ing of the forums, as these spam bots typically come out when Americans are asleep.

According to the Mods, they are people not bots. None of those suggestions would do a thing to help.

[MoanaLisa]

These are all poster complaints, I was asking for actual moderator references that address the problem.

Many of the closing messages on those threads--probably not all because the explanations have been made numerous times--contain information about the problems. The one thing that is important not to do is drive the spammers into existing threads to do their thing in post #687 of some thread. That's much, much more difficult to find, deal with and takes longer too.

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New accounts shouldn't be allowed to create threads if they're below a certain post threshold, or a time frame.

This is exactly the sort of rule that would drive spammers into posting in already existing threads and make this all the more difficult to deal with.

[CheckThyself]

If you ask me the problem is not even the bots. I made the terrible mistake of not scrutinizing the links I was given to find the mod response.

Log for 1-2 hours and come to 5 separate replies that can more or less be summed into “omg you didn’t read did you”.

But you see, thats precisely the reason why you got those response quotes. Its because, as you acknowledge, you didnt read.
Perhaps in the manner you were responding too warranted such replies? i didn't read them as personal attacks at you however

regardless of sub-fighting/arguments in this thread, it's the exact same thing that has been done numerous times before. Somebody makes a thread complaining about the spam, people come in either agreeing with the OP, reciting the Mod's explanation, or people just dump on everybody else. At the end of the day it ends the same: a mod comes in here, recites their reasoning for the umpteenth time, thread is closed.
It's up to idividual people to do their due diligence if they dont want to be apart of those being dumped on by everybody else.

This is very tiresome and detracts from the overall experience. If you know someone you don’t care about will just split every damn hair to just tell you off it’s just overwhelming. Add bots to the mix and one questions their decision to come spend some time here only to be bullied around and face bots.

i'm unsure what you are complaining about here. This thread or the overall website??

[THEORACLE64]

It isn't acceptable. I bet they're working on the best ways to prevent this sort of spam without affecting real posters.

You keep thinking that... *laughs in 10 year where there's always been spam and they still haven't found a work around*.

It's not like, y'know, you should be able to make a certain amount of posts over a certain time frame before you can create a thread or anything

[m4zz0928]

How dare they! To even fathom having such vile content for my precious eyes to look upon is a farce! What kind of operation is this?

Seriously though the shaming community is getting real tired

[Tziva]

It is not acceptable, and we handle it as fast as we are able. These threads seldom are up for more than a couple hours.

We are doing literally as much as we can here. We are always actively recruiting mods, we use a third party spam service, and we have multiple systems in place to stop and vastly restrict the spam (and they mostly work) such as captcha, email registration, etc. However, the spammers are smart and able to get around the system sometimes. Most still get caught but as you can see, some get through.

See the last post just a few threads down from here:

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.