Archives Discussions

[yurtesen]

Wouldnt it be better if you would moderate posts from new users only?

In addition it may be helpful to use a CAPTCHA for submitting messages to threads also.

I find moderating all messages quite a bit problematic in the long run. You will end up hiring somebody to check all messages

[bobwhitecotton]

Thanks for your suggestions.

Moderation is the quickest & most effective means to keep spam off the site and allow valid posts without imposing too much hardship on the developer community.  So it is burdensome on moderators and admins but it hasn't been that difficult.  We are investigating other methods to keep spam off the site and will be implementing them shortly to relieve the moderation burden.

[yurtesen]

Yes, but there is also unacceptable delay between posts and replies on threads. I am just saying that this is not a good method of stopping spam. I have never seen in any forum that every message was moderated one by one. Many forums have extensive captcha-question/answer mechanisms to avoid spam instead.

[vmad256]

It seems you can't create new discussions any more. No matter what I try, I simply get an error message saying that I have insufficient rights for posting. I guess this is somehow related to the recent changes with moderation.

[yurtesen]

I think the error message is misleading. I got exactly the same error for this thread. But then it appeared all of a sudden Perhaps it just means that it must be moderated and goes into a queue... This is sad, it will kill the forum if they cant resolve this issue.

[iomartin]

Sorry for bringing this topic up again, but this is the top result when I search for "moderation" on the forum. Do I eventually gain a "trusted user" status and stop having all my messages moderated?

[yurtesen]

They will be moderated, it never ends...

[deedeeyelverton]

Hi Martin Oliveira - We are continuously looking at how we can optimize the forum for our users while balancing managing spam. We get more complaints about captchas than any other thing so for now, moderation has proven to be the best option. Thank you for your suggestion and for using the forum, and we'll continue to look at ideas for making the forum more enjoyable for our users.

[iomartin]

I agree to the OP, only new users only should be moderated. Spammers are looking for easy targets, so if takes them too long to get a "trusted user" status, they'll just move on to some other forum. Moderation sometimes takes hours, and what could be a fast conversation may end up taking days, moving somewhere else or worse - just being abandoned.

[bobwhitecotton]

So thank you for all the advice.  First, we do mail authentication for every new account created as part of the registration process and we don't do captchas.  Our platform does not have the ability to create trusted users that don't require moderation.  In fact, this post will go to moderation and I will have to approve my own post as an admin before it is visible on the forum.

Controlling SPAM has been a bit of a nightmare.  We turned on moderation for a period of time until the SPAM stopped.  Then we took some of the least trafficked forums and turned moderation off, hoping the spammers would not return but alas within a week they were back in full force.  Most of the spammers hit the site and when their content does not get approved, they move on; however, we have experienced some very persistent spammers, who have returned hundreds of times and so I have resorted to banning their account so that they must create new email account and then go through the registration process every time they want to post.  So these are not bots or any kine of automated SPAM but real people determined to get their SPAM on website.  I will also add that the spammers have also been very creative but we've found a way to thwart their efforts for each new trick or potential hole to get SPAM on the site.

So I think you are getting the gist of the conversation.  Like you, WE hate having to moderate each post and it is the first and last thing we do to clear the queue every day as we are sensitive to this issue.  I personally have a browser window open 24 hours a day and email alerts for every post in order to approve in the most timely manner given we haven't found a way to auto-control SPAM.  Moderation is evil but unfortunately a necessary evil in this case, least the forums get filled with senseless SPAM which in my opinion of even more annoying.  So we feel you pain because moderation is also painful for us as well.  Trust in the fact that we have much more important things to do other than moderating the forums - it is annoying and a time sink that none of us want.

We'll continue to pursue other avenues to mitigate our need to moderate every post but we don't see any simple solutions in the very near future.

Best regards,

Bob