The Care and Feeding of Spambots
Posted: 29 Nov 2011, 14:45
There's been an awful lot of spambots recently. I have no clue how they manage to bypass both reCaptcha and specific questions tailored for this forum, but I'll be further looking into dispatching them. If anyone experienced with forums has any ideas how to further improve security (besides enforcing that all new accounts must be approved by the administrator), I'd appreciate any help I can get.
Until then, here's how you, as a user, should handle spambots:
Please use the report button when you spot a spambot or otherwise unsavory post. This will make a huge report icon pop up on my screen whenever I browse through new posts, and therefore will alert me to spam bots or other terrible things (that you report).
This is the optimal way of making the staff aware of bad things. Yes!
How to NOT report a spambot:
Before you is the work of a spambot. This spambot. This spambot is an eyesore. It shouldn't exist. I have to post about it.
NO! You don't have to post about it. All that means is that the staff has to not only deal with the spambot, but also clean up your comments and funny remarks afterwards. You also don't have to respond to somebody's spambot comment by telling him that he shouldn't be commenting on spam bots; that just creates a longer chain of posts we have to delete! Please don't do that.
And that's all. Please use the report function and avoid commenting on spam bots so that we can get rid of them as quickly as possible. Thank you for reading!
Until then, here's how you, as a user, should handle spambots:
Please use the report button when you spot a spambot or otherwise unsavory post. This will make a huge report icon pop up on my screen whenever I browse through new posts, and therefore will alert me to spam bots or other terrible things (that you report).
This is the optimal way of making the staff aware of bad things. Yes!
How to NOT report a spambot:
Before you is the work of a spambot. This spambot. This spambot is an eyesore. It shouldn't exist. I have to post about it.
NO! You don't have to post about it. All that means is that the staff has to not only deal with the spambot, but also clean up your comments and funny remarks afterwards. You also don't have to respond to somebody's spambot comment by telling him that he shouldn't be commenting on spam bots; that just creates a longer chain of posts we have to delete! Please don't do that.
And that's all. Please use the report function and avoid commenting on spam bots so that we can get rid of them as quickly as possible. Thank you for reading!