about ads..

[Red Fighter 1073]

seeing meister's post about ads, i thought about this:

why not make a sticky in the rules forum about not posting ads.

this way, there will probably less hassle and less banning/probation for the mods to have to deal with.

[Skyshot]

Umm, about that... (http://forum.nuklearpower.com/showthread.php?t=9367)

[Meister]

The problem with that is simple: they don't care. These people sign up on multiple forums, post their links en masse, regardless of any rules that might be in effect, and disappear. Some bold ones come back a few days or weeks after and post a new set of links, but most hope there are some forum members who are, scuse me for speaking openly, dumb enough to click those links before the respective moderators come in. I've also seem ad spam posts on other forums that were closed, but retained their links, and of course there might be the odd forum where the mods don't do anything about it in the first place.

Which is why I want to ask everyone not to click on ad spam links. Thank you.

EDIT: Odd, there really isn't anything on ad spam as such (yet), but I distinctly remember having read something to the effect of "no ad spam d00dz." But as I said, those who read that rule don't break it and those who break it won't read it.

[Red Fighter 1073]

Odd, there really isn't anything on ad spam as such (yet), but I distinctly remember having read something to the effect of "no ad spam d00dz." But as I said, those who read that rule don't break it and those who break it won't read it.

oh ok, i wasnt even aware that the "no ads allowed" rule was even stated. with that and the other stuff that meister said in mind, then i guess a sticky wouldnt be necessary. though, like i said, i didnt even know that the rule was actually stated.

[Michael Morris]

The problem with that is simple: they don't care. These people sign up on multiple forums, post their links en masse, regardless of any rules that might be in effect, and disappear.

Comment spam. I detest it too. I'm finishing up on a module for vbulletin 3.5 that fruitad can use to put an stop to this nonsense, if you guys are interested. If he doesn't want to upgrade I can retrofit it to work with 3.0.7 if you'd like.

Note that I have an early beta in operation on ENWorld - but it's a bit hypersensitive - banning users is the only course of action it will take and on rare occasion it bans users who aren't trying to spam (It's done this 3 times since I installed it in February while banning 62 spammers in the meanwhile).

Anyway, drop me a line if interested. Love the comic and helping with the forum is the only thing I can afford to do.

[secretskull]

How about making it so people can't post links on their first post? I don't think the forum should tell them they cant post links, it should just delete them.

[Red Fighter 1073]

though, there is a problem even with that theory skull because the person could just make an ad in their second post. also, posting a link bad. think of ANY of the discussion threads. there are always links in those threads.

my main point for posting this particular thread was because i wasnt sure if the "no ads" rule was even stated.

[secretskull]

I meant no ads in lets say the first ten posts. Anyway the forum doesent tell him that their is a problem with his post it just delets it after he logs out.

[Meister]

I'm not sure that's even possible.

Michael, that talk of the module intrigues me. Can you tell us a little more about how it works?

[Michael Morris]

I'm not sure that's even possible.

Michael, that talk of the module intrigues me. Can you tell us a little more about how it works?

Certainly.

The module scans the posts of any user with less than X posts (default 20, admin configurable) for the presence of domain names known to be the origin point of spam, for instance freeipods.com. It does this by referring to a blacklist meant for the moveable type program and maintained by Jay Allen at his website at www.jayallen.org.

Each time a match is found, it is scored. The program then analyses the message. Is it short? Is it nothing but a URL? Does it start with a URL? Is it the start of a thread (most spam posts are)?

The score is tallied and the program decides on a course of action based on the threshholds set for it by the administrators of the site. The defaults follow.

A blacklist URL is 5 points, a post less than 100 characters is 1 point, a post that is 50% URL is 2 points, a post that is all URL is 3 points, thread starts are 2 points.

If a post scores 5 points, a warning is either PM'ed or sent to a private admin forum.

If a post scores 10 points, a warning is issued, and the user is put into the tachy goes to coventry list. This feature, which is not properly implemented in 3.0.7, causes a poster's posts to become ignored by every user but himself. Hence he may be mislead into thinking his spam is taking, when in fact no one is seeing it. Coventry can be removed if applied in error by the system.

While turned off by default, the system can also issue a banning if a user hits a certain threshhold. This is no different than a banning issued by an admin - it can be retracted but it is permanent until someone does so. Users that are banned are also coventried.

EDIT: BTW, it is certainly possible (and relatively easy) to ban new users from the use of the url bbcode - but that doesn't stop them from posting non-linked url's.

[Skyshot]

I like how you think, Michael.

One question, for various reasons -- you mention 3 people were banned by this module of yours despite not spamming. What exactly did they post to do this?

[Red Fighter 1073]

skyshot, here could be an example. i make a discussion thread about news. here itself could an example post.

"www.news4u.com/doggydoo-doo/vide/gif.blah/

what do you guys think?? isnt this weird??"

i believe you get points for starting a thread too right??

if that is the case, there were points leading towards a ban because it had a link starting the thread. a thread was started. and i believe it was under 100 characters. though, i dont think the whole "under 100 characters" part would be an issue over here because it seems that we make more in-depth posts in this forum, i think.

[secretskull]

Even if this was implemented right now, and you made that post, it wouldn’t do anything to that post unless the admin sets the post limit for blocking ads to 280. So unless we get new users, who are making short posts, with Urls in the beginning, that are non-spam, we shouldn’t have a problem.

[Meister]

A rare occurrance. Plus it's always reversible. Personally I like the idea of that module.

I think people would be less likely to copy/paste a link than they would be to click it; not to mention that I like to think the majority of our users is smart enough not to click ad spam links anyway. So that may be something to think about as well.

[Red Fighter 1073]

yah, i think it is a good idea. i just thought of an example to show skyshot. also, seeing the statistics, the module looks pretty good. also, i think there is a banning system a little bit like that in the bungie.net forums, as well. except they manually blacklist people for stuff.

[secretskull]

Michael would it be possible to tweak this module so that it willwork on all links not just blacklisted ones and casuse mass ignore at 5 points? Otherwise half of the ad threads would still get through.

[Michael Morris]

Michael would it be possible to tweak this module so that it willwork on all links not just blacklisted ones and casuse mass ignore at 5 points? Otherwise half of the ad threads would still get through.

I sorta doubt it. The blacklist is a 57K text file with around 3000 domains - it's pretty thorough. In any case the new version of the module scores all posts by new users - not just those with blacklist URLs. The presence of a blacklist URL earns the highest score, but it isn't the only thing that does it.

Anyway, the three mistake victims each posted a link to a page on freewebs.com that they'd created. www.freewebs.com is on the blacklist since spammers often use it for fly-by-night operations.

Also note that the blacklist hunts for domains - it doesn't care about complete url's. Hence there is no difference to the system between www.freewebs.com/jamie or www.freewebs.com/spammy The phrase "freewebs.com" is in both messages so it is triggered.

Anyway, this module is being written to be highly configurable from the admincp so that the admins of the site can arrive at whatever scoring system they feel comfortable with.

Again, this module is being written for vbulletin 3.5 I don't know how many hacks are being ran by Pierre, and the number he has will determine how difficult any upgrade will be. I can retrofit it to 3.0.7 and will reluctantly do so if Pierre can't (or doesn't want to) upgrade to 3.5 for whatever reason - though I strongly recommend the upgrade to 3.5. It has numerous new features that make administration of a site much easier - such as the creation of plug-in modules like this one. Moderators will also find the new AJAX controls and inline moderation tools to be very useful. More about vbulletin 3.5 is at http://www.vbulletin.com

[FenrisWolf]

If I do not remove the link in my sig, which links to a freewebs account, will I be banned if this blacklist goes up?

[Michael Morris]

If I do not remove the link in my sig, which links to a freewebs account, will I be banned if this blacklist goes up?

No, 2 reasons

1) It doesn't scan signatures (I've never known a spammer to set up a sig)

2) You have 125 posts, well beyond the default 20 post threshhold. This means the system will ignore you completely.

[RedScar]

So when will this new wonderful system start? I very much like this idea.

[Meister]

I moved Michael's other thread (good thinking!) into the admin section and linked this thread so Fuitad can get information and decide whether it would be worth the trouble. We'll see.

[Demi-God 2.0]

I know that some discussion boars have threads like "Funny Pics! Post your funny pictures here!", or some picture thread. Usually these have a lot of links in them. What happens if this module is implemented and someone starts a thread like this?

[Melfice]

It so happens we have one of those "funny pics"-threads around here, so a bit of looking around from a new member would not produce the effect of the module.

Mistakes by new users would be made ofcourse, but that's what the contact button is for, I guess... So they can get themselves unbanned, I mean. If it's really a pure mistake. Ya know?

[Demi-God 2.0]

No, what I mean is people sometimes post purely links in these threads. I'm not talking about just looking around, I'm talking about actually posting.

[shiney]

If they were a new user it is possible they would be banned. However we have not implemented this module at this time, and it is possible to tweak I am sure.

[synkr0nized]

Commendable idea, Michael. Rules alone mean nothing to a lot of the join-spam-and-leave types, as they never do care or read them.

[Michael Morris]

Thanks. Since the time I originally started testing on this I've discovered a bug in the script that only affects PHP 5.x. If this board is on PHP 4.x though that bug won't show up (It has to do with how PHP 5 handles the eregi function). Eventually I'll try to find some time to fix this.

Now that this board is on 3.5 though I can provide the module or you guys can look it up on www.vbulletin.org - let me know

It's probably easier to reach me via email though. Just send email to Bill.Gates@microsoft.com except change out mlmorr0 for Bill.Gates and uky.edu for microsoft.com