Ok let's see here of all the Paizo Pathfinders who obliterated the spammers namely on April 15th 2015.
Lissa Guillet
Chris Lambertz
Liz Courts
Julie Iaccariro
Cort Odekirk
Mark Seifter
Christopher Anthony
Sara Marie
Winslow Dalpe
Erik Keith
Scott Spalding
And Cosmo
Did I miss anyone?
Also Important: I need a good looking Warhammer two handed preferabbly Vector Flat but I might have to make one flat. It's important. And a chain...and a Candle. Hmm... Candle on a chain attached to a Warhammer.
Yay! I finally got to flag one of those crazy Korean spam bots!
Dang, they're busy tonight.
Out of curiosity, is there a reason each new spam account always posts exactly two messages?
I think it's learned behavior. They used to post hundreds, but it's too easy for management to simply delete all posts by a given user name. Posting twice makes it harder and more time-consuming to manually remove.
They're playing a game of hours here. The longer their posts can be on the front page of the forum, the more likely the Google spiders will pick it up, which is what they really want....
I'm flagging as fast as my kindle will go
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With apologies to Blue Öyster Cult:
"You see me now a veteran of a thousand spammer wars
I've been flagging on the edge so long, where the posts of spambots roar
And I'm young enough to look at, but far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside
I'm not sure that there's anything left of me.."
I did my part in the Great Spam Battle of July 8th, 2015. Where were you?
Fighting in the subforums and threads alongside countless other posters...
The things I've seen...
*EYEBEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!*
Oh the humanity!
Is it so evil to want to nuke just the spot they're doing this from?
Is it so evil to want to nuke just the spot they're doing this from?
Eh, probably nothing you can't fix with an Atonement.
Still wouldn't recommend it, though...
Flagged lots today. Edge of Tomorrow....
Keep up the good work folks....
I did my part in the Great Spam Battle of July 8th, 2015. Where were you?
One foxhole north of you....
So ... is it possible to just remove those Asian characters as options from the site? It feels like doing that would hinder these jerks' ability to spam the site quite a bit ....
Limiting the unicode available wouldn't help as it is too easy to build a post generator. The only ral ways to stop it are an automated post evaluator or the tag and slag method currently in use.
Ultimately only the second method is tried and true as with any automated system can eventually be played.
StIll a post evaluator would help.
General Discussion all flagged.
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Problem is there's no one there in the Paizo office to take care of them now ...
Sure, but Seattle'll wake up in a couple of hours.
The options for how spam messages get handled, and whether flagged posts should (under particular circumstances) automatically be hidden have been discussed before.
For now flagging them is the best thing to do.
This lot have a hefty fascination with General Discussion.
Yes but they have spread it out in the past this is just lazy.
Been flagging these korean threads whenever i see them.
I'd like to visit korea in the future, but 1st contact shouldn't be like this.
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War. War never changes.
The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower.
But war never changes.
In the 21st century, war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired. Only this time, the spoils of war were also its weapons: Posts. For these resources, Spambots would invade Paizo.com, the Rules Forum would annex the advice forum, and the General Discussion Forum would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states, bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth.
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I regret that I have but only one flag to give per post!
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Ask not what your forum community can do for you, ask how many spam threads you can flag for your community!
More spam.
I would urge people not to comment on the threads with spam, just flag them with Breaks other guidelines and let the mods do their work.
Agreed, but this thread is quite possibly not the best place to get the word out about that.
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More spam.
I would urge people not to comment on the threads with spam, just flag them with Breaks other guidelines and let the mods do their work.
Agreed, but this thread is quite possibly not the best place to get the word out about that.
Perhaps the mods can create a thread that appears as a sticky thread in all forums. This way, all board members will know what to do.
I private message the person accidentally posting in the spam thread, if they have PM enabled:-)
I private message the person accidentally posting in the spam thread, if they have PM enabled:-)
That's what I do as well.
I usually don't believe in collective punishments, but I'm starting to lean towards thinking that a Northern-led unification of Korea wouldn't be such a bad idea.
Here we go again...
FLAG GUNS FIRE AT WILL
EDIT - Done. Whoever these *******s are, they're trying to make it difficult. They created a slew of new IDs and only did two posts per ID.
One even took the effort of an avatar.
But i'm firebolting flagging anything in my sights.
I usually don't believe in collective punishments, but I'm starting to lean towards thinking that a Northern-led unification of Korea wouldn't be such a bad idea.
Are you sure the spam isn't Northern-led?
I wonder if it would be feasible to have newly registered users have their first post (or two) be reviewed by moderators before appearing.
That's a good idea.
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I wonder if it would be feasible to have newly registered users have their first post (or two) be reviewed by moderators before appearing.That's a good idea.
I suspect that, from Paizo's point of view, that's a terrible idea. Not only would it vastly increase the moderator load, but it also decreases the casual participation rate in what is, fundamentally, a marketing tool that generates more sales for the company.
This would be like a car dealership deciding no longer to support test drives, because it was worried that the cars might be damaged.
I wonder if it would be feasible to have newly registered users have their first post (or two) be reviewed by moderators before appearing.That's a good idea.
I suspect that, from Paizo's point of view, that's a terrible idea. Not only would it vastly increase the moderator load, but it also decreases the casual participation rate in what is, fundamentally, a marketing tool that generates more sales for the company.
This would be like a car dealership deciding no longer to support test drives, because it was worried that the cars might be damaged.
What you say would be correct if the rate of new user posts was large relative to the total number of posts. I suspect (but don't have proof) that new user posts are a fraction of the total.
Also, last time I checked, car dealerships generally don't offer unsupervised test drives -- one of their people has to be in the car with the test driver. The equivalent here would be moderating the first 2 or so posts of each new user.
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A solid approach to forum spam is: If the user is below X (e.g. 5) postings, disallow links. It can be circumvented, but it makes spamming significantly more difficult (meaning: less attractive for spammers) and is relatively easy to implement. Yes, new forum members will probably not like it, but explaining it with spam usually results in acceptance.
What you say would be correct if the rate of new user posts was large relative to the total number of posts. I suspect (but don't have proof) that new user posts are a fraction of the total.
I wonder if it would be feasible to have newly registered users have their first post (or two) be reviewed by moderators before appearing.That's a good idea.
I suspect that, from Paizo's point of view, that's a terrible idea. Not only would it vastly increase the moderator load, but it also decreases the casual participation rate in what is, fundamentally, a marketing tool that generates more sales for the company.
This would be like a car dealership deciding no longer to support test drives, because it was worried that the cars might be damaged.
Actually,... no.
From Paizo's point of view, new posters (and hence potential new sales) are one of the major reasons for this forum to exist in the first place. Even if only 1% of the posters are "new," that 1% is the reason the forum is here. The 99% of us are already largely committed to Pathfinder and have largely made our major purchases; the 1% are incoming new money and new market.
Therefore, they want to make this forum as easy to use as possible specifically for the n00bs.
Got one in Online Campaigns, General Discussion.
No respect, I tell ya...
I suspect that, from Paizo's point of view, that's a terrible idea. Not only would it vastly increase the moderator load, but it also decreases the casual participation rate in what is, fundamentally, a marketing tool that generates more sales for the company.
I wonder if it would be feasible to have newly registered users have their first post (or two) be reviewed by moderators before appearing.That's a good idea.
I also think the behaviour of the spammers would become - post two pretty short, neutral kind of "where can I buy this game" threads, then post what you came here to post a few days later.
It seems to me that any solution is ultimately a losing war if it relies on human capital because their wages are lower than Paizo's.
I private message the person accidentally posting in the spam thread, if they have PM enabled:-)That's what I do as well.
If we all start doing that, it would be kind of ironic.
Actually,... no.
From Paizo's point of view, new posters (and hence potential new sales) are one of the major reasons for this forum to exist in the first place. Even if only 1% of the posters are "new," that 1% is the reason the forum is here. The 99% of us are already largely committed to Pathfinder and have largely made our major purchases; the 1% are incoming new money and new market.
Therefore, they want to make this forum as easy to use as possible specifically for the n00bs.
What you say would be correct if moderation of the first 2 (or so) posts drove away a larger fraction of new users than the filling of the Recent Threads sidebar with spam. Last night's spamfill of the sidebar was pretty disheartening even for long-time users. If the population of new users is not too great for the number of moderators available, the inconvenience of moderation might not even be much deterrent at all to the new users.
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So I have been fighting in the recent Spam War and a thought occurred to me. I think it would be easier if you did not have to actually go into the spam post to flag it as spam...
Also I think people with a certain number of flags for spam should get a special title on the boards like 'Spam Buster' or 'Spam Slayer'.