| I would like to suggest implementing a 1 - 3 day waiting period for new accounts before they are allowed to post on the forums. I think this will help reduce spam on the forums as bots and advertisers usually just make new accounts to post immediate once-off spam and be done. It would be unlikely that the average spam-bot or advertiser would be able/willing/persistent enough to return after 3 days to follow up. Many other forums already implement this practice successfully. It would work great in conjunction with a system to automatically delete unused accounts after a further waiting period. (e.g. 2 weeks) (accounts made for spam and abandoned due to the waiting period.) It would also discourage people from making "fire and forget" accounts to troll or ask a once-off question on the forum, never to return and participate in the community again. There must be hundreds of users in MAL's database by now that were made as disposable accounts - needlessly hogging usernames that someone else may want and wasting server resources. Another option to further enhance this feature is to allow new users to contact the staff on IRC (thereby validating their legitimacy) in order to have their account manually activated before the waiting period is over. |
NyaaJun 17, 2015 6:11 AM
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VBS said: It would be unlikely that the average spam-bot or advertiser would be able/willing/persistent enough to return after 3 days to follow up. Why is that? VBS said: It would also discourage people from making "fire and forget" accounts to troll or ask a once-off question on the forum, never to return and participate in the community again. Does this "a once-off question" happen a lot? |
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| It's the same spammer all the time, even a month wait will not change anything for him. IRC? 99% of newbies don't even know what it is. |
Serhiyko said: Efficiency.VBS said: It would be unlikely that the average spam-bot or advertiser would be able/willing/persistent enough to return after 3 days to follow up. Why is that? Bots and humans doing spam advertising are out to hit as many sites as possible in as little time as possible. After an unsuccessful attempt, he/she/it will typically abandon the attempt and hit another site instead. (or possibly start over - in the case of a bot) A human would have to remember to visit again after 3 days to complete his/her mission - which is unlikely to happen if they're spamming hundreds of sites per day. A bot would have to be programmed with site-specific procedures to visit again after 3 days - which is a massive waste of resources when it could rather be spamming other sites with thousands of posts in the time it takes for a single account to become active. I doubt all but the most dedicated spammers and programmers would take up the task - and that would greatly thin out the numbers. Anyway, do you really need to question it if it's something that is standard practice on many forums? (Some smaller forums even go as far as making mods manually approve every account) Serhiyko said: Not often - in comparisson to general activity, but you'd be surprised how much it can become collectively.VBS said: It would also discourage people from making "fire and forget" accounts to troll or ask a once-off question on the forum, never to return and participate in the community again. Does this "a once-off question" happen a lot? Just browse the user database and you'll find thousands of abandoned accounts, many of which were only active on the day they were made (i.e. disposable) |
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vivan said: Really?It's the same spammer all the time, even a month wait will not change anything for him. It would certainly make his job a pain and far less efficient. He would only be able to spam once every 1-3 days (depending on the waiting period implemented), or he would have to register and maintain a list of usernames and passwords along with times due and come back afterwards with each account - instead of just simply registering, posting, and repeating. Even so, it would add a lot of administrative effort for him and likely limit the amount of accounts he'll be managing and thus, the amount of spam he could potentially post. Same thing for a bot. The bot would require far more complex programming to do essentially the same thing a user would have to to spam the forums. Therefore more administrative effort for the bot programmer to set up and more system resources to run it. This procedure can also potentially give the staff an opportunity to kill the user/bot's other accounts before they spam by analysing patterns in IP addresses and/or email domains used to register several accounts in short succession. The site could be modified to automatically flag accounts registered in this manner. The site could also be modified to flag accounts that attempt to post several times during the waiting period, if necessary, to fight a bot that keeps retrying until success. vivan said: That's just a potential option for allowing people to circumvent the waiting period. They could just come back after the specified time and their acccount would be active anyway.IRC? 99% of newbies don't even know what it is. |
NyaaJun 17, 2015 6:16 AM
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VBS said: Wasn't it obvious? Most of that spam follows the same pattern.Really? VBS said: It requires zero (if posting is automatic) or close to zero (if it's completely manual) effort.Even so, it would add a lot of administrative effort for him and likely limit the amount of accounts he'll be managing and thus, the amount of spam he could potentially post. Do you really believe that using primitive db is hard? VBS said: "This manner" is no different from what is happening now - and if they could they would have done it already.The site could be modified to automatically flag accounts registered in this manner. |
vivan said: Wasn't it obvious? Most of that spam follows the same pattern. Maybe different spammers just use the same script/program that is shared somewhere |
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| We're already working on something to fight spambots, but yeah, that's all I can say. |
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| Can't you just implement capcha? for registration or posting first message? |
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ExTamplier said: Can't you just implement capcha? for registration or posting first message? There's already one for registration. |
| great suggestion, i support this idea |
| I agree with the three day waiting period, but I don't agree with the disposal of accounts of inactivity after a certain amount of weeks. I'm actually highly against deletion of anything, but for this case one must be incredibly careful with it. Nonetheless it might stop some as we can see but not all. But let us further the annoyance for these spammers and bots. |
 Behold of my awesomeness~ controversial and/or sensitive topics likely devolve into the same repetitive, derogatory, abusive, and harassing comments can no longer be posted. But my feels. |
| I don't agree with a waiting period, because it's not a good method to welcome new people. I don't agree either with the removal of inactive accounts. It's always possible that the person returns, and that person won't be happy if everything of his/her/x lists is removed from the database. I'm a good example for this, I was absent for four years, but I still returned. I won't be happy if over three weeks work of input data is removed. Also it's probably not possible to just remove members, because it can cause the forum to crash. If you suddenly start removing posts with it. |
chomio said: I don't agree with a waiting period, because it's not a good method to welcome new people. I don't agree either with the removal of inactive accounts. It's always possible that the person returns, and that person won't be happy if everything of his/her/x lists is removed from the database. I'm a good example for this, I was absent for four years, but I still returned. I won't be happy if over three weeks work of input data is removed. Also it's probably not possible to just remove members, because it can cause the forum to crash. If you suddenly start removing posts with it. you can always export your list you know. and then import it to your freshly created account |
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