Spam by love guru

Son_of_Imoen

Once again as I'm posting is, the forum is swamped by topics by that infamous loveguru, wanting to sell his love potions all over the world and saying he can help solve marriage problems.

It makes the forum completely unreadable for me, as it's hard to pick the real topics between the spam (and my autism doesn't help there).

Couldn't someone from the staff tell that love guru that his posts have nothing to do with Baldur's Gate and that his posts are completely unwanted here?

It's even more annoying than all those people complaining about a 'SWJ agenda' and Mizhena. I could pick the other topics out between them, but these floods of love potions completely overwhelm my capacity to read.

Please, tell him to stop!

Son_of_Imoen

To all self-proclaimed 'Love Guru's':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muDZD3wgoHI

I've been telling him he's unwanted for an hour now, in his profile, in his posts, but he keeps posting.

Avenger_teambg

Bots don't listen. But even if it is a person, they would just double the effort if they see their message got ears.
Reporting them is also contraproductive, because it just bloats the new posts list which i scan for spammers.
Making newbies post harder is also kinda difficult, because it would keep legitimate users with legitimate problems away from the forums. The only way i can see to mitigate this problem is to add more moderators with different time zones.

Son_of_Imoen

So there's nothing I can do but avoid the forums while an attack is going on? That's hard (my - autistic - mind gets obsessed by all those posts that don't belong here - like I've shown today by posting 16 replies to the spam posts saying him he should stop and we don't want him).

Sylvus_Moonbow

Elsewhere, I had mentioned that Vanilla forum comes with a built-in plugin that checks latest IP, e-mails and account names via Stop Forum Spam. I gather it has not been properly configured. This feature is included in all Vanilla plans.

https://blog.vanillaforums.com/help/stop-forum-spam/

And the website the plugin connects with during registration - http://www.stopforumspam.com/

A honeypot using a hidden div tag field to fill in during registration works well too, although I don't know if Vanilla forum has a plugin to do so, especially one that autoban the IP when the hidden field is filled.

If these forums are configured to use the Stop Forum Spam plugin, the values shown in the link above need to be lowered.

marceror

How about implementing some anti-bot checks when new accounts are created, perhaps even require that the first 5 posts require additional input to throw off bots. Seems like there should be better ways than just requiring more modders in different timezones.

Sylvus_Moonbow

Or simply ban India as a whole country from accessing the site.

SetEnvIf MM_COUNTRY_CODE ^(IN|IND) BlockCountry
Deny from env=BlockCountry

http://www.stopforumspam.com/country/in

Your love guru's at work.