Forum SPAM seems to be getting worse. I think it might help if new user posts were hidden by default. Once an account has been verified as genuine, those posts can be unhidden, but until then they wouldn’t bother anyone.
Obviously, since a simple strategy won’t catch everything. But it would be better than nothing.
Alternatively, to prevent something like today's downpour from happening, perhaps there could be a limit of posts/X minutes, at least for accounts up to level 2?
If it was a level 1 going rogue, the easiest solution would be to disable Forum access (posting) until X level (or another straightforward trigger). The only real downside is preventing users with technical issues from posting, but I guess they can just go through "Help and Support". Surely people can wait a day or two before posting.
Anything else requires actual development time, and I'm not sure how Michael feels about that.
Re: how bad: it pretty much flooded the forum. New, almost identical spam threads at a rate of several a minute, for about 10 minutes (or at least I stopped watching after that). From a level 1 account, yes. As far as I remember, anyone who is here to actually study will gain a few levels fast enough that early restriction wouldn't be a problem.
I’m all for making Michael’s job easier. The trouble with level-based access is twofold. It’s relatively easy for an AI to circumvent, and it penalizes the clueless newbie.
It seems to me that the number of new users who actually post is still small enough that a manual verification step wouldn’t be too onerous.
I don't think it's getting worse - it was one user, in fact, the first time I believe that a user has posted more than a single spam message. There is already a few things that are in place to avoid certain situations, and if the frequency of issues increases, then I'll consider additional changes.
At this point, I do think the current frequency of bad actors warrants restricting those that come in with questions. It may be rare, but something that effectively says "you are new, and you're making an earnest effort to understand the system by asking a question, but we're going to make it harder for you" is a step am not yet willing to take.
Reporting is extremely helpful, as it alerts me (and a helper who handles most of the reports) via a message, and guarantees that we see the potentially offending issue.
Yeah, that's a bot on a timer... needs to get banned to stop. The bot that resurrected the "アルバイト???" thread still hasn't gotten banned, but at least they aren't spamming new threads.
What all of those 3 bots have in common is that they have 0 Terms and 0 Mastery stars. Two of them are level 1 and the other level 2. If a level restriction is off the table, how about a restriction based on that? To unlock posting you'd need to study at least one term. Would take an actual user less than a minute.
Bots like these are extremely unlikely to be able to interact with those systems. A more capable bot could do it, but these are just general spam bots.
My main concern is that they advertise all kinds of different services and, more importantly, can post links. That's potentially dangerous, especially if moderation is slow.
Edit: Found a 4th, same thing. Some of them seem to be scraping the forums to post under "relevant" threads. Still stick out like a sore thumb though.
Maybe it’s getting worse, maybe all the admins are on vacation. Either way, it’s concerning that ads for illegal products and services stay up for as long as they do.
Since I appreciate Michael’s concerns about putting up roadblocks for new users who are actually trying to use the website, let me modify my original proposal. When a new account is created, put it in a probation status. When another user reports the post made a probationary user, immediately hide the post (and optionally all other posts made by the same user) until an admin can follow up.
