Thanks for the spam free boards

GreenWarlock

It just occurred to me that I am taking it for granted that these boards are free of spam, and at various times that has not always been the case. This does not happen by accident, and I have no idea of the amount of work involved filtering all the spam, and only the spam, so want to say a big thank you to the team behind this.

I have always said that the perfect software is invisible, as it seems so natural your users are no longer aware of the tool. It is my highest praise to say that the spam filter on this site seems invisible, so thanks again for all the hard work!

JuliusBorisov

@Tresset

Tresset

Heh, thanks. Of all the moderators here, I am the one that is most active in the fight against spambots. The others usually only ban them if I have been gone for a while or if one slips by the filter and gets flagged by a user. I have become pretty good at identifying them by the patterns in their behavior even when everyone else is fooled. I also often research their email, username, or IP address with google to see if they are known to be spambots.

We have a spam filter that will automatically block most spams, but that was actually set up long ago by @Dee with a great deal of advice from @Troodon80. Only site admins like Julius and, at the time, Dee, can touch those settings, so I just clear it out whenever I think to check it. The spam filter isn't perfect though. It has a tendency to catch real people too. Most often this happens with new users who make long posts or posts with links in them. It also seems to happen a lot when users edit their posts for some reason. I will often restore these trapped posts and inform the user that the problem is solved when I do. Most veteran users will not have issues with the spam filter because we can verify users as real people. This basically tells the spam filter to ignore all posts made by the verified user. All new users start out as unverified and we have to manually mark them all as verified to prevent them from being caught. The other moderators help with this process quite a bit. Naturally we can't verify everyone who joins before they get caught so the filter needs to be checked often.

I am glad you appreciate all the hard work we do in this eternal war against spam!

Yulaw9460

Deleted.

mlnevese

Your spam is now filtered

Yulaw9460

Deleted.

mlnevese

I think @Tresset should answer this question. He's our spam specialist after all

Tresset

Well, I would say that spamming spam may cause me to fold you into a folder, but other than that...

mlnevese

But should the spam be filtered before folding?

Rik_Kirtaniya

mlnevese said:

But should the spam be filtered before folding?

Just show it to @Minion. He'll take care of it.

I wonder, is S.P.A.M. = Senseless Posts Aggravating @Minion?

Yulaw9460

Deleted.

mlnevese

And here we can see a spam folder

Prince_Raymond

Yulaw9460 said:

Does spamming with spam nullify itself, ergo returning a universal null sum?

I believe the ones qualified to answer your question would be the crew of Monty Python's Flying Circus.