SpudFiles

Are new users' posts required to be manually approved by mods? I understand that there might be issues with spam bots but perhaps such a restriction would tend to discourage new members from posting if there is a bottleneck.

Define bottleneck? I myself have heard no complaints from new members, have you JSR?

And can I/we still attach thumbnails with new posts ? I seem to have lost the ability or knowledge to do it.

jrrdw wrote:I myself have heard no complaints from new members, have you JSR?

Not quite, just wondering from the perspective of new users, but I suppose that if you're on top of the moderation queue then it's a non-issue.

I got frustrated by the delay when I first joined and ended up forgetting about the site for a while during the duration, but it didn't stop me from coming back!

jackssmirkingrevenge wrote:I understand that there might be issues with spam bots but perhaps such a restriction would tend to discourage new members from posting if there is a bottleneck.

I cannot reveil moderator tactics but I can tell you the would be spam bots are not bots at all, they are real people trying to get free advertising any way they can get it. It's sometimes a daily battle and Spudfiles moderators are winning!

jrrdw wrote:Define bottleneck? I myself have heard no complaints from new members, have you JSR?

… because you don't authorise their posts complaining

It's perfectly reasonable to have a quarantine period, about the only way to (mostly) beat the spammers. Keep at it, I know how hard it can be.

By the way, I can offer pills that might "engorge your cannon".

jrrdw wrote:It's sometimes a daily battle and Spudfiles moderators are winning!

Thank you for your service o7



Odd that spudfiles would be a target for such spammers, I just wondered if the forum would flow better if the spam was reactively moderated, most people know spam when they see it and it would be reported fairly quickly. My concern is that most of the "old guard" is no longer active therefore we need an injection of new blood, therefore anything that facilitates it is a good thing.

I'm still lurking. Two more years until sweet freedom.

mark.f wrote:I'm still lurking. Two more years until sweet freedom.

Members with under 5 posts are indeed reviewed before posts go live... typically not much of a delay, but it is mainly jrrdw modding/approving on a regular basis. You'd be surprised how pervasive spammers can be... basically places will pay pennies for people to go make accounts and post with links embedded within text. Many will actually try to write some not-so-obvious BS about our hobby and inject links into random parts of the text to boost traffic and search engine hits to the websites they are paid to promote.

Why is SpudFiles a target? It is a big place with lots of history, even if people aren't super active. Some forum upgrades will fend off more automated attacks, but not much stops a human being paid to purposely try to get content stuck up here.

Another solution is to promote some folks into moderators. jrrdw has been a blessing for staying as active as he has.

You'll probably find that it's not even that this is a big place with lots of history, although that helps - it's just that it's a forum and thus relatively easy to turn your spambots onto.

Given that there's a relatively low volume of posts, even allowing a few spammers to pollute the place, however temporarily, will reduce the perceived quality to a level where genuine new users are dissuaded from joining, far more than they are by having a 5 post quarantine period. I'm a member of another forum where online signup has been killed totally - new users have to send an email to the admin and receive their credentials by SMS, another where users are forbidden from using PMs until they have 40 messages, another where there's a similar restriction on the small ads part of the forum, and so on.

It's a long, uphill struggle to keep the spammers at bay, but it's definitely worth it to keep some very specialised and interesting material available; for every newbie with stupid questions like myself, there's a jsr with thoughtful answers.

Huge props to the admins and mods.

Yup.

Still checking in regularly, I've got some ideas for new projects, but not a lot of time to realise them.

Labtecpower wrote:I've got some ideas for new projects, but not a lot of time to realise them.

Welcome to adulthood!