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LainieH
Community Manager

Art, this is Lainie.. I'm helping Renee more and more and I'm acting as a Community Admin now.

Here is what we've done so far working with our technical team:

- turned on a keyword interceptor (this failed last night because some keywords were not added.

- turned on a link interceptor that has logic like this: if link is not whitelisted AND user has < 3 points then block. This is problematic because spammers can have more than 3 points..  (Art, I agree with you and hope to turn this one off soon).

We had a rash of spam last year at this exact same time -- and they eventually went away.

thank you very MUCH to all of you who have marked items as 'abuse' .. I'm seeing those.. the night before last spammers were blocked (systematically with the interceptors).. but then some threw in words that were not configured and they go through.

thank you especially Australian users -- I see you blocking them.. you are doing great and it's my goal (SAS' goal) to eradicate this problem altogether.. I thought I had them .. but then they were back.

I've got eyes on this.. you are not alone. thank you so much..

PS: I can tell you the exact interceptor configuration if you send me a message privately .. I will respond.. you may have to "follow" me..

jdmarino
Fluorite | Level 6

I spam really easy to spot?  (You cleaners must be doing a good job with it.) 

I'm impressed by how many posts that appear to me as "people just trying to get others to do their homework" get decent answers.  Those posts just annoy me, but I'm not sure they rise to the level of abuse.

art297
Opal | Level 21

John,

The spam I am referring to is the collection of posts that, particularly after business hours, fill the forum screens with links to view various things (usually sporting events), are really easy to spot.

Yes, the site administrators have been doing an excellent job deleting them when they spot them, and they have really been trying to automate the process, but I have often simply stopped looking at the site when it starts getting cluttered with too much spam.

I've suggested allowing at least a relatively small group of users to serve as human spam pre-filters.  i.e., having the ability to temporarily mark a poster as a spammer, leaving it to the administrators to make the final decision.  I wouldn't give the capability to all posters as I'm sure that the power, itself, would be abused.

Art

ballardw
Super User

When the subject lines show things like "recover lost loves", "watch sporting events" and almost anything with "amazing"  they are fairly obvious.

There has been at least one time I was marking spam while it was being posted, one message removed and two showing up when the browser refreshed. Almost felt like an agent of SHIELD fighting Hydra ...

art297
Opal | Level 21

Interestingly, upon sending my last reply I received the following message:

Please note, your reply will need to be approved by a moderator before it is posted in the forum

Apparently I used some verbiage that the current filters are trying to capture.

ballardw
Super User

My last post in this topic had the same thing. I'm wondering if it reacting to the triple exclamation points in the subject.

May be fixed now though.

jaredp
Quartz | Level 8

"Reporting Abuse" is the best option, IMHO.  This is a SAS run community and should be controlled by SAS alone.  There is no telling what happens when you mix objectives (that is to say, your objectives of the site might not align with SAS' objectives). 

SAS employees should have final say on matters of deleting or modifying content.  As a community manager myself, I've seen what relinquishing control can do.  Lines get crossed, mistakes are made, and power can go to people's heads.  

I'll jokingly say that SAS should employ Text and Fraud Analytics to better identify spam and flag it before it goes live, but the more realistic options would be to keep the Report Abuse link and/or look into something like  Akismet.

art297
Opal | Level 21

: We'll just have to agree to disagree.  While some might justifiably disagree with me, I view the discussion forums as a SAS sponsored community that is actually driven by and for the SAS community.  It is, in essence, much like SAS Global Forum, i.e. a SAS sponsored event that is run by a combination of SAS and the SAS community.  If SGF were run strictly by SAS, I don't think it would get the amount of volunteer support that it has always relied on to be a successful event.

I, personally, avoid sites that require me to verify that I'm not a spammer.  Yes, it can reduce spam, but it can also be a huge turn-off for the people who have made the site so successful.

jaredp
Quartz | Level 8

I can respect that.  And you raise a good point about SGF and volunteers.  Yet I think SGF and an online community are totally different from a volunteer perspective.  But like I alluded to, I might be overly cautious due to past experiences.  I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong on this one!

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