JackDownUnder
Well-known member
looks like forum has been hacked.
Spam
- Thread starter JackDownUnder
- Start date
Yeah. Something hit every forum it could.
EDIT: And it looks like it is back for a second round. Does the 60 second rule work the same for SPAM as it does for reporting SPAM? Because I could report them a lot faster if I did not have to wait 60 second between every report.
EDIT: And it looks like it is back for a second round. Does the 60 second rule work the same for SPAM as it does for reporting SPAM? Because I could report them a lot faster if I did not have to wait 60 second between every report.
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Frank_Dean
Well-known member
The vast majority of the spam you see on this forum comes from people who register on the forum but do not have a version of Trainz registered or on their timeline. It must be very difficult to implement the filter in the forum that if you do not have Trainz registered you cannot actively participate in the threads.
johnwhelan
Well-known member
they could be blocked by saying unregistered accounts postings are moderated first.
Cheerio John
Cheerio John
JackDownUnder
Well-known member
Do not understand, to log onto the Forum group one has to enter ones Trainz name and member #.
Please moderators fix the issue.
Please moderators fix the issue.
Member number? Like the ID at the front of KUIDs? Never remember entering that. But yea, spam in general has been outta control not just on the forums, at least for me. I think what should be done is that any user with no registered version of Trainz needs to verify their humanity, I'd think that should help a bit more.
It is actually very easy.
It would, however, also block potential new buyers of the game who want to look around and (for example) ask questions about what version they should buy.
We moderators do not get paid enough for the amount of work that would result in.
Note that the salary of us moderators is so much that N3V does not even need to know our bank account to transfer it to us.
Moderators can never (technically) change anything to a forum. You will have to be administrator or developers level for that.
Also see my above two comments.
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As I have said before, the problem is that N3V keeps adding open forums to the Mainline Discussion area which is totally wide open. If there was only a Pre-sale forum and maybe a General Forum then the spam would have less targets. Most other online systems these days require e-mail confirmation to activate a user. You sign up with a valid email and an email is sent. If you don't click the link in the email then the account remains in limbo and unable to post. I don't know if this version of vBulletin supports that feature and it is certain that N3V won't be updating anytime soon, after all they have mods to handle it. 
Yet another spam attack. Just a thought N3V, why not lock the forums down to just General Trainz to post with no purchase? Surely that can't be too difficult!!!! I bet if you had to pay your Moderators a fee for each spam message removed, you would get off your collective backsides and fix it very quickly.
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I suppose that it is all relative. The level of SPAM varies - we get increased spam posts periodically (like now) followed by periods of little or no activity. I have seen (and reported) a few SPAM posts during the past 7 days but that is really nothing out of the ordinary. We are not being flooded by the stuff as occurs in some software/gaming forums.
In those periods of higher than zero spam activity we often get a corresponding increase in posts from users complaining about spam posts, and those posts can sometimes be quite "agitated". Calls for banning all unregistered posters or imposing a time delay with or without human moderation of all posts from "newbie" (i.e. unregistered) users have been made before and, thankfully (IMHO at least) rejected.
If a first time unregistered poster wants to ask a genuine question about TRS22 or Trainz Plus then the General forum would not be a suitable place to post it - it would probably get ignored. I do recall some considerable time ago seeing such a newbie post, a genuine one about TANE, in the General forum and the poster being told, somewhat tersely, by another user to post the question in the TANE forum.
I have also made the mistake of reporting as SPAM a somewhat badly constructed post from a first timer that turned out to be a genuine question about Trainz, much to my embarrassment.
As N3V have pointed out, and pointed out often during these debates, people who are not registered users but may become registered in future need to be able to ask genuine questions and get immediate answers. They should be able to do that without having to jump through hoops or wait indefinitely for a moderator to approve their post.
As for the SPAMmers, automated post filters, such as "bot blockers" (e.g. "Captchas") can be easily circumvented by using humans to make the posts, which many of them do. I am sure that even ChatGPT and others would be up to that task.
In short, I don't believe that the problem is as serious as some would make out. The "cure" may cause more problems than the SPAM.
My opinions only.
In those periods of higher than zero spam activity we often get a corresponding increase in posts from users complaining about spam posts, and those posts can sometimes be quite "agitated". Calls for banning all unregistered posters or imposing a time delay with or without human moderation of all posts from "newbie" (i.e. unregistered) users have been made before and, thankfully (IMHO at least) rejected.
If a first time unregistered poster wants to ask a genuine question about TRS22 or Trainz Plus then the General forum would not be a suitable place to post it - it would probably get ignored. I do recall some considerable time ago seeing such a newbie post, a genuine one about TANE, in the General forum and the poster being told, somewhat tersely, by another user to post the question in the TANE forum.
I have also made the mistake of reporting as SPAM a somewhat badly constructed post from a first timer that turned out to be a genuine question about Trainz, much to my embarrassment.
As N3V have pointed out, and pointed out often during these debates, people who are not registered users but may become registered in future need to be able to ask genuine questions and get immediate answers. They should be able to do that without having to jump through hoops or wait indefinitely for a moderator to approve their post.
As for the SPAMmers, automated post filters, such as "bot blockers" (e.g. "Captchas") can be easily circumvented by using humans to make the posts, which many of them do. I am sure that even ChatGPT and others would be up to that task.
In short, I don't believe that the problem is as serious as some would make out. The "cure" may cause more problems than the SPAM.
My opinions only.
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johnwhelan
Well-known member
Another issue is spam removal. Yesterday I reported a post on a thread that had previously been reported as spam. It still contained the original spam message.
Cheerio John
Cheerio John
Considering that the Moderators, who remove the reported SPAM, are unpaid volunteers, I think that they do a good job.
I just did a search and apart from the SPAM that I reported this morning and last night (my time zone), all my previous spam reports seem to have been acted on - i.e. the SPAM has been removed. I normally follow up each spam report with a post to the thread stating "SPAM reported" so it is fairly easy to check.
But no system is perfect and the Mods are not on duty 24/7 plus they are not necessarily in our time zones.
I just did a search and apart from the SPAM that I reported this morning and last night (my time zone), all my previous spam reports seem to have been acted on - i.e. the SPAM has been removed. I normally follow up each spam report with a post to the thread stating "SPAM reported" so it is fairly easy to check.
But no system is perfect and the Mods are not on duty 24/7 plus they are not necessarily in our time zones.
The full relevant part of the quote was ...
Perhaps you missed the sarcasm in his post. There have been many times when I have been doing unpaid volunteer work where I have remarked that I "did not get paid enough to put up with this s**t." So I know how the mods feel - no matter what they do they will get the flak.