More Spam Than Monty Python

Vern

Trainz Maverick
In the General Forum that is. Not responded to and reported but why is there so much apathy or inaction at N3V when it comes to leading simple actions to prevent these spurious posts.

All it needs is for new members, or new members without a registered version, to have their first two or three posts subject to moderator approval.

If that means waiting a few hours for it to show up, so be it.

Do N3V even have any interest in this community and their official forum, anymore?
 
If you think it's bad on here at the moment Vern, you should see the Trainz Questions site - I often have to deal with spam on there although I do have the ability of removing it.

Shane
 
All it needs is for new members, or new members without a registered version, to have their first two or three posts subject to moderator approval. If that means waiting a few hours for it to show up, so be it.

Well, as we all know by now, N3V has no interest in improving their forums. Stuff like this has been suggested for years but nothing new ever happens. What you've suggested is a great idea, one that would at the least help filter out a large chunk of spam accounts, i.e. those that have no Trainz versions registered to their accounts. But considering N3V's absolutely great history of listening to what the community wants, i doubt we'll see it implemented.
 
I wasn't aware that an average 1-2 spam post a day constituted having "more spam than Monty Python"....

It's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. Last time they tried to implement something like that (I think it was captcha related) there was a massive out-cry by the forum users for it.

Additionally, from my understanding of things; this forum isn't set up like most vBulletin forums, due to the integration with Planet Auran (errr MyTrainz....) which limits what they can and can't due administratively. If my memory serves me, because of this it's quite difficult for them to activate a partial post moderating setting. But the technical details is better left up to Spiffy or Tony to explain.

peter
 
My title was deliberately ironic, perhaps that got missed.

Nevertheless the point stands if there are simple steps that can be taken, why not do it? If the forum is linked with Planet Auran (shouldn't that be Planet N3V these days), then it ought to be easier to arrange posting round the customer base.

As regards hearing from N3V, well news on just about anything Trainz related seems to have dried up in the last few weeks, nothing about how TS2018/Next is coming along (it's now April...) or likely release date, little to no official feedback on the forum and it seems no interest in maintaining a professional front end on the forum by looking at implementing steps to regulate spam.
 
Perhaps all the SPAM is coming from one, or two places ... And it will get much, much, much worse, turning into massive worldwide DNS attacks ... very soon ... several hundreds of "Them" are employed in an office building(s) writing "Fake News" and SPAM, misinformation, and disinformation... "They" are not just posting nonsense, "for the fun of it"

At one time last year there were 2 pages filled with SPAM at 12:00 midnight, incoming at a rate of one post per minute, for hours on end
 
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The only thing that you can do by now is keep reporting if there's a spam post
 
Hi All
Unfortunately, due to the way that V-Bulletin displays moderated posts, this is simply not an option available to us (every post is shown on a single page in a massive list; with newest posts at the bottom - at the moment it takes about 2-3 minutes to fully load the moderated posts list...). We are looking into options, however to ensure that the forums are easy to use for new members asking questions before purchase (or trying to find out how to register Trainz, etc), we don't plan to prevent users without a registered version of Trainz from posting.

We have got a Captcha system implemented for users without a registered version of Trainz, however this does not stop all forms of spammers unfortunately.
 
Well something needs to be done Zec, sorry. There is another one lurking in the General Forum again this morning.

This is not some forum being run from an enthusiastic amateur's bedroom, it is the official company "portal" to exchange views and information about the product. I belong to plenty of other V-bulletin forums and they never seem to have an issue with spam. And if v-bulletin *is* part of the problem then maybe the solution is a different forum hosting software. What is the official N3V (i.e. Tony's) view on the matter?
 
Self Promoting Advertising Material, Spam...

I have retired from running online businesses and moderating on a large business foum, but my experience of spam is this..

As a wholesale business owner on the web I received hundreds of email offers of cheap SEO for better Google search results.

OK, so what has that to do with spam?

As a forum moderator spam posts were the result of those cheap SEO invites.

How? Well they joined forums using bots and made the same introductory post on hundreds of forums or added a post to an established thread and in it they would covertly put a business web address and/or keywords.
Or they would make a comment and add a web address in smaller or even an invisible font at the end, there was one on this forum today. You just highlight the thread text to reveal what was invisible.
There is invisible text here....>>>>> Euromodeller

Because forum software is third party it can be difficult and/or expensive to customise to stop spamming so a business decision is made, the return on investment is poor so it gets veto'd.

There are apps (programs back in my day) that could alert you to spammers, but that is only effective if every forum has the software and each spamming member's email address is shared with the app.

So, as a forum owner, it is a very difficult decision to make, use profits up on software or use profits to regenerate business?

They are one step ahead of each rendition of captcha.

As members we should not reply to spam threads, they are monitored for results, but shold use the warning triangle below the post to report it to the mods.

edited to add, eBay is suffering huge attacks of false bidders each day, these bids are made by new members within seconds of the auctions ending, they win the auction and don't pay, it's not spam but is auction wrecking.
eBay are having difficulty stopping the bots from joining as new members. So even a multi million dollar corp. has trouble with new memberships causing problems.
 
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