spam filter

smeagolheart

You guys got any plans for an improved spam filter? The i'm not a robot thing doesn't seem to be working.

It can get pretty tough to read the forums.

example of forums:

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Cerevant

Moved to Site Resources for discussion of Vanilla functionality

JuliusBorisov

While a better spam filter would be good, moderators usually come and clear threads. I doubt much time passes till one of us visits the forum and starts the cleaning

mf2112

bengoshi said:

While a better spam filter would be good, moderators usually come and clear threads. I doubt much time passes till one of us visits the forum and starts the cleaning

Being unable to report more than two spans in a row without being called a spammer and then restricted from posting was fun the first time. Then I read a post saying don't report them because it interfered with somebody looking through the posts for spam.

smeagolheart

JuliusBorisov said:

While a better spam filter would be good, moderators usually come and clear threads. I doubt much time passes till one of us visits the forum and starts the cleaning

I appreciate the countless man hours spent to clean things up but you guys aren't on 24/7 like an automated system would be.

I wouldn't mention this unless I was bothered by it. The spam threads such as the ones in the snapshot above really kind of bring the forums to a unreadable mess and are a daily occurrence.

smeagolheart

seems to be worse at night, this is the day after the screenshot above....

You have to scan through so many bogus entries to see if anything is happening.

Grammarsalad

Please try to find a solution. Those bots are annoying

jastey

3/4 of recent discussion site is spambot posts. This is making browsing the forums really annoying, so I second the plea for improvement.

lansounet

Yes please this is getting ridiculous, at least 3 pages of the recent discussions are spam.

smeagolheart

And here's the third day in a row, more spam. I could keep posting this everyday I guess, I'd really prefer not to...

Troodon80

The problem is that no matter what method is used spam bots, or, rather, the people behind the coding of the spam bots, will find a way to crack it. This site uses reCAPTCHA... and reCAPTCHA was recently cracked. Again. (both links are very interesting reads, assuming anyone else is into that)

lefreut

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smeagolheart

well I guess you guys are doing a great job during the day, but at night (US night) things get hairy and that's where the screenshots are from.

This leads to the website being unreadable during certain hours of the 24hr day. Could you guys hire or maybe provide privileges to some volunteers to clean spam after duty hours?

smeagolheart

And here's the new threads for Friday.. Lots of interesting reading.. somewhere? I'd like to read about the game but...

Vallmyr

There are more spam threads currently than actual threads, geez! XD

ScuD

You have got to be kidding me. Just add the moderator approval for the registration for the time being until reCaptcha is fixed.
Or the do moderators enjoy deleting spam topics every day by chance?

lefreut

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Ammar

Agreed. This needs to change. It makes Beamdog look unprofessional.

After all, the spam is not even subtle, hard to catch spam. None of the other forums I frequent have trouble like this.

mlnevese

The last time we activated the automated spam filter in the forum it marked as spam and deleted two normal users and blocked several from posting. I'd rather clean the forums by hand every day than have a single person banned by machine mistake.

sparkleav

Well if you need anyone to clear spam around the GMT timezone... *raises hand to volunteer*

mf2112

These guys seem to all be from India. Perhaps if you made an Indian subforum and put it at the top of the forum list??

joluv

Were the user deletions reversible? Because I could accept being occasionally banned for a few hours if it meant no more spam.

Jarrakul

It does feel like we need a better solution than clearing the spam threads manually. I appreciate the hard work by the mods, but you guys are up against literal machines. We're gonna need an automated solution.

I do note that the vast majority of the spam is posted to the Icewind Dale forum, presumably since it's at the top of the list. If you can't find another solution, I wonder if it'd be effective to just create another "spam trap" forum above Icewind Dale.

Ammar

The spam trap is an excellent idea. Otherwise, find a technical solutions. Since there are forums with neither random deletions of users nor spam this is possible.

Even withholding the first post of every new user until it is cleared by a moderator would suffice.

At least in my CEST timezone, the recent posts view is complete unusuable every morning.

lefreut

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smeagolheart

something should definitely be done, if only for the folks who live in timezones where the admins aren't active. The spam really builds up.

As @lefruet says, the recent discussions list, where fans of the series would expect to go to see what is going on with the game, becomes completely useless. If a casual fan were to decide to check out the forums and see just a bunch of spam, what kind of impression does that give? If you can't find something interesting through the obfuscation, regular people might lose interest as well.

argent77

It's getting ridiculous now.

This is the first page of the Troubleshooting section. It still continues on the second page. I really urge you to install more effective countermeasures or this forum will become completely unusable eventually.

Sylvus_Moonbow

Sorry for being a broken record, as I have stated the following in a few other spam related threads, but Vanilla already has support with a built-in plugin that references IP and account blacklists through www.stopforumspam.com.

You can read about how to properly configure the plugin here - https://blog.vanillaforums.com/help/stop-forum-spam/

I found this after @lefreut made a mention of a question - https://vanillaforums.org/addon/botstop-plugin

It's a plugin for Vanilla that can be configured to ask multiple questions with an answer. Ideally the questions would be related to game information.

What is the name of where you start in Baldur's Gate?
What is the name of your foster father?
Icewind ....?
..... of Dragonspear?

Example questions of course. One can argue that any new player wouldn't know the answers, but they're present in the opening scrolling text video, and are titles to supported Beamdog games. A bot can be setup to know the answers to such questions, but those running the flyby bot registrations will need to know the answer themselves and apply it to the bot when registering to the site. If the input field does not match the answer, the registration fails.

If you know what countries the majority of the spam is coming from, you can ban the entire country from even gaining access to the site.

Or, you can continue to have the forum loaded up time and again.

Why continue to ask mods to bear the load when other automated options are available and supported by Vanilla? I just don't get it.

Troodon80

Sylvus_Moonbow said:

https://vanillaforums.org/addon/botstop-plugin

It has been said before that non-core developed plugins cannot be added on Vanilla-hosted packages. They only apply to self-hosted versions using the open source build.

mf2112

Are you all discussing adding some more moderators then?

Aedan

Then there is nothing you guys can do?
I post in many sites and this is the only one where I find so much spam every single day. It does not encourage me or other users to post and the forum activity is definitely decreasing.