All,
This site has been discovered by those who delight in posting links to pornography. What fun!
Are the moderators happy to deal with this themselves, when they visit, do they want us to PM them, or would a 'Report this post' button be useful?
John
"Report this post" button needed?
how about a
How about a "button of doom" that replies replete with computer destroying bugs ?
Wolf Kotenberg
Just an update, I have added that link to Forum Rules post, so that you can always find it on the top of forum page.
The problems with spam ... and whether a Report button would help or not ...
Perhaps it's a coincidence? About the time the new wave of email spam began - you know, Buy this hot stock! It's me, Enrique; Cheap price meds - this forum (and many other internet discussion fora) saw a marked increase in the volume of spam.
The easiest technique for dealing with it - delete the spam - is rather ineffective, because the spamster's account would still be open, and so often a barrage of spam from the same account will often follow, easily up to 20 spams a day.
More effective is to move the spam (to a hidden area) and ban the user.
Identifying what's spam is easy - no doubt almost anyone reading this section could do so, with 99+% accuracty, within seconds. Moving any spam and banning the user is also quite easy to do ... provided you have the power (to move, and to ban), and are online.
Would having a Report button work? I think so ... but only if there were people with the power to move spam and ban users whose combined coverage of The Asterisk* was significantly greater than that we have today.
Other options: since almost all spam comes from users who register and then post spam within a few hours of registering (often just minutes), a 'moderated first post' (hidden) section would cut spam to almost zero, immediately. However, that could be very frustrating to genuine first time users, no matter how carefully the need to be quarantined for up to 8 hours (say) were explained.
Perhaps it's a coincidence? About the time the new wave of email spam began - you know, Buy this hot stock! It's me, Enrique; Cheap price meds - this forum (and many other internet discussion fora) saw a marked increase in the volume of spam.
The easiest technique for dealing with it - delete the spam - is rather ineffective, because the spamster's account would still be open, and so often a barrage of spam from the same account will often follow, easily up to 20 spams a day.
More effective is to move the spam (to a hidden area) and ban the user.
Identifying what's spam is easy - no doubt almost anyone reading this section could do so, with 99+% accuracty, within seconds. Moving any spam and banning the user is also quite easy to do ... provided you have the power (to move, and to ban), and are online.
Would having a Report button work? I think so ... but only if there were people with the power to move spam and ban users whose combined coverage of The Asterisk* was significantly greater than that we have today.
Other options: since almost all spam comes from users who register and then post spam within a few hours of registering (often just minutes), a 'moderated first post' (hidden) section would cut spam to almost zero, immediately. However, that could be very frustrating to genuine first time users, no matter how carefully the need to be quarantined for up to 8 hours (say) were explained.