Spam prevention?

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(Mods please move this if it is in the wrong category.)
Recently the trainz forums keeps getting spam advertising posts. I just reported one this morning in GT. This got me thinking if the admins could put some sort of anti-spam measures in place. Once idea I propose would be to make all posts from members less than 30 days old require moderator approval before becoming visible that way the mods could catch spammers before it is even seen. It's already okay that we do report spam whenever we see it but I do get bored of having to write out reports for the same issues.
What are your thoughts on the spam issue?
 
I've seen it as well. Probably depends on if it's more or less work for the mods.

As I've said for everything that is a pain for people, learn to ignore. I don't read every thread unless it is interesting to me. Most of these titles are clearly shown as advertising based on what they are talking about in what category.

Thanks

Sean
 
After you posted the one this morning, there were two more spam posts in the XP performance thread in GT. One thing I think would help would be if they remove the 60-second limit, as I have to report one, wait a full minute, then report the other. I usually go to another thread and then come back, and I suppose it is because they don't want someone just going through and slamming a bunch of spam reports on everything, but it makes it a bit of a hassle. But yes, it certainly seems there has been a rash of them lately. Also, I once reported a spam and then posted that I had reported it, and got a PM from N3V asking me NOT to reply to spam posts as it makes more work for them. Did you get a PM like that? Now I just report them, but I don't post that I reported them, so maybe they will get multiple reports, dunno.
 
Perhaps we should have a couple more people with the ability to hide or delete a spam message. I could think of a couple of names who could do it but wouldn't wish to take on the roll of full moderators.

Cheerio John
 
What moderators? We don't seem to have any, leastwise not in the Northern Hemisphere. Golden rule on forums is do not reply to the spammer as that shows it's been read. If it's a multiple spammer just report Multiple spammer, no need to report every one of them - that was requested by a now absent Mod.
Vetting every new member could be very time consuming.
Something like a post approval by mods system would need active moderators, not a list of inactive ones. It took 6 weeks on one Railway Simulator forum to get a post approved by which time it was totally irrelevant. Didn't bother going there again.
 
The forums do in fact have anti-spam tools in them (I don't know the details, just based off from what I've been told by the admins) but some stuff does get through. N3V has stated that they do not want to restrict new user postings as it will drive real new members away from the community & in turn the game.

We in fact have a reasonably moderation team covering many time zones and hemispheres (although I don't see how being in one hemisphere over the other effects ones ability to moderate). However all of us (and anyone else you're going to pick) has lives outside of the forums & so will only deal with stuff when they can; unless they specifically hire someone to spend their time moderating the forum.

But really when you think about it, the amount of spam that gets posted here is really small compared to other places. My email, which supposedly has spam controls on it, gets way more spam in it every day compared to here.

I am going to lock this for now, as these types of posts/threads have typically fallen under Rule #19. As it is an admin related issue, I'll let them make the final call on it.
 
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