I’ve recently created a ticket in LW issue tracker, that suggests two possible solutions:
Prohibit users with negative Karma from creating discussion topics. (Spammers get downvoted faster than their posts get banned.)
Require 1 positive Karma point to create a discussion topic. (Spammers are unlikely to earn it, and 1 point can be easily obtained by anyone who wishes to post.)
I prefer the second option. The ticket was accepted, but with no information on which variant will be implemented.
If the attacker is willing to put work into spamming this specific site, which is possible, then neither of these gets us anywhere, since you don’t need karma to give karma. To be an effective barrier, you would also need to limit voting to those with positive karma. I’d support that.
EDIT: Admins would then have to track down and delete those accounts which gave positive karma to spammers.
I think the second option is preferable. Is anyone currently working on this? If not, I’m going to try to implement the change myself, seeing as I suggested something like this months ago to no avail.
I’ve recently created a ticket in LW issue tracker, that suggests two possible solutions:
Prohibit users with negative Karma from creating discussion topics. (Spammers get downvoted faster than their posts get banned.)
Require 1 positive Karma point to create a discussion topic. (Spammers are unlikely to earn it, and 1 point can be easily obtained by anyone who wishes to post.)
I prefer the second option. The ticket was accepted, but with no information on which variant will be implemented.
If the attacker is willing to put work into spamming this specific site, which is possible, then neither of these gets us anywhere, since you don’t need karma to give karma. To be an effective barrier, you would also need to limit voting to those with positive karma. I’d support that.
EDIT: Admins would then have to track down and delete those accounts which gave positive karma to spammers.
Which is far from being certain, and so worth testing in this obvious way.
Agreed.
I think it’s probably a good idea to limit voting to those with positive karma anyway, but it’s worth doing one without the other.
I think the second option is preferable. Is anyone currently working on this? If not, I’m going to try to implement the change myself, seeing as I suggested something like this months ago to no avail.
I also like the second idea.
Thanks for doing that. I think either one would be an improvement.