RE: Frequent bot advertisings

Sephhh

Sephhh

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I know almost all of you has almost seen a bot-advertising thread though if not, I'm sure that is because our head staff and other people are doing a great job in deleting these threads.

Before, the bot advertisings weren't as much as frequent as it is right now as it was quite rare. I'm estimating that in a week, there are about 15-20 advertising threads (with horrible grammar) made by bots and in fact I always report them. Well I know some of you would say that the head staff do delete it but if there was a way to avoid it, then I think it should be implemented. I don't know about the others, but there was this one instance that I accidentally clicked the link though I'm not sure what it did.

Also based on what I see on the recent activity page, there are about more than 10 bots who set their homepage on an untrusted and probably not safe site. I don't think we have a "report user" button, though I think it's quite harmless since people would rarely be see those so I'm not sure if it would actually merit a report. I also know that the great admins made an effort in reducing the advertisments by having CAPCHA, but bots have been bypassing this feature. I do think we should still have a report user button for users who do something against the rules in their profiles. TBH I'm not sure if writing a post this long was needed but I had (and still have) a lot of spare time...

TL;DR - Address the issue of the frequent bot advertising and make a report user button.

Also off topic: The only way I can get to the recent activity page is going through a profile and checking the sub-menu. Can you place it on the forums main page, perhaps beside the "What's New" button? :D
 
Ceres

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There's only one problem with this (possible) feature.

It can and WILL be abused. Just like the report post function, it's destined to cause chaos to the point where the Admins need to formally announce for everyone to stop fucking using it for their pleasure. I know other functions that have been through the same treatment of being abused (hello, "Hate" rating) and got removed/modified.

I do not like the idea. The abuse that WILL follow could be unbearable for Admins and players alike.
 
Sephhh

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foxararma said:
There's only one problem with this (possible) feature.

It can and WILL be abused. Just like the report post function, it's destined to cause chaos to the point where the Admins need to formally announce for everyone to stop fucking using it for their pleasure. I know other functions that have been through the same treatment of being abused (hello, "Hate" rating) and got removed/modified.

I do not like the idea. The abuse that WILL follow could be unbearable for Admins and players alike.
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If I'm missing out on here, is the report post button being abused? For sure I know some ratings have been abused, but that's because, well it's a rating which mostly everyone uses. For the report buttons, I don't think anyone would really bother to use it except for really concerned people or people who just like to troll and abuse things.
 
GmK

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Not sure what you are on about, foxarama? The reporting function has never been abused.

---

@Sephhh

User reporting will only be available in Xenforo 1.3 which isn't out yet.

You can find 'Recent Activity' like it has always been via the pop-down menu next to the big Home button in the navigation menu at the top, or beneath the home button when clicking it.

We already use all anti-spam signup mechanics the Xenforo offers, we could set to manually approve every single singup, but that would be terribly ineffective for us admins ;)
 
Ceres

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GmK said:
Not sure what you are on about, foxarama? The reporting function has never been abused.
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I do recall a topic about an issue with abusing the "report post" function, and infractions will warrent 2(?) warning points on the user. I cannot seem to find it on the new forums, so I'm assuming it's buried in the depths of the old (but not forgotten) one.

If my mind's deceiving me, I apologise.
 
superstein

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We usually delete them within 15 minutes of then appearing, as long as you guys report them it stands out to us a lot more. We even have to manually accept some users who are almost always spambots and I believe that takes away a lot of spam but we still get hit hard.

That being said I do remember one sneaky spambot that made an introduction thread then a few days later ended up posting a spam thread. Very clever!
 
P

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I always thought of these bots as real people who were actually posting in a kitchen cabinet/health type of community -- And that they would probably get some of our threads in their forums such as "The Bloody Masquerade Ball" or "Dragon Cave". Maybe they're part of another dimension trying to contact us by telling us to invest in kitchen cabinets or weird vitamins and supplements? Should we try to decode their messages and see what they mean? :alien:
 
IQD

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foxararma said:
There's only one problem with this (possible) feature.

It can and WILL be abused. Just like the report post function, it's destined to cause chaos to the point where the Admins need to formally announce for everyone to stop fucking using it for their pleasure. I know other functions that have been through the same treatment of being abused (hello, "Hate" rating) and got removed/modified.

I do not like the idea. The abuse that WILL follow could be unbearable for Admins and players alike.
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We've evolved to a maturity level beyond that. Rewind the clocks a few years and this would be a legitimate concern in my eyes.

Ontopic, I don't see what's difficult about reporting the adbot post, waiting an hour or two, and then noticing a lack of said adbot post. If there were some ritual-esque procedure that needed to happen to ban an adbot, then yeah it'd be a problem. afaik it's just ban the bot and delete the thread.
 
myusername22

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superstein said:
That being said I do remember one sneaky spambot that made an introduction thread then a few days later ended up posting a spam thread. Very clever!
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are we absolutely sure all of these are bots? I have doubts a regular bot would be able to find the introduction thread section, and the grammer on a lot of these bots is horrid i don't know if they do that to avoid detection by programs looking for spam or what but could it be possible people are manually joining to send spam?
 
Jayfeather

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foxararma said:
I do recall a topic about an issue with abusing the "report post" function, and infractions will warrent 2(?) warning points on the user. I cannot seem to find it on the new forums, so I'm assuming it's buried in the depths of the old (but not forgotten) one.

If my mind's deceiving me, I apologise.
Click to expand...
It was an issue of not using it enough
 
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