We’ve been getting increasing amounts of spam, and occasionally dealing with Eugins. We have tools to delete them fairly easily, but sometimes they show up in large quantities and it’s a bit annoying.
One possible solution is for everyone’s first comment to need to be approved. A first stab at the implementation for this would be:
1) you post your comment as normal
2) it comes with a short tag saying “Thanks for joining less wrong! Since we get a fair bit of spam, first comments need to be approved by a moderator, which normally takes [N hours, whatever N turns out to be]. Sorry about that, we’ll be with you soon!”
3) Comments awaiting approval show up on moderator’s screen at the top of the page or something, with a one-click approval, so that it’s very unlikely to be missed. I think this could get the wait time down pretty low even with a smallish number of moderators.
The main downside here is that people’s first commenting experience wouldn’t be as good. My intent with step #2 was to smooth it over as much as possible. (i.e. if it just said “comment awaiting approval”, I’d think it be much worse).
I’m curious a) how bad people think this experience would be, and b) any other issues that seem relevant?
Hmm. Doing it only for links would def solve for spammers, which I think hits roughly 60% of the problem and is pretty good. Doesn’t solve for Eugins. Not sure how to weigh that.
(Still interested in a literal answer to my question “how bad is it to have your first post need to be approved?” which I don’t have much of an intuition for)
The other option is to hold comments from new accounts (or accounts with low posts) with certain keywords—for moderation.
I.e. “plumber”, a phone number etc.
I think if you specify “you have less than 10 comments and you posted a link” to let people know why their comment is being held for “a day” or so. It’s not a big deal.
If it was not explained then it would be more frustrating.
If you capture all comments while an account is suspected spam, that would be okay.
As long as LW isn’t high-profile enough to attract custom-written spambots, a possible easier alternative would be to combine a simple test to deter human spammers with an open proxy blacklist like SORBS. This strategy was very effective on a small forum I used to run.
Using a list like SORBS sounds good. I actually think the test might be more annoying than waiting to get your post approved. (or, maybe less annoying, but causing more of a trivial inconvenience)
Also some of them are businesses. Like plumbers. You could call them up and tell them that they are paying spammers to post in irrelevant places and they should ask for their money back.
We’ve been getting increasing amounts of spam, and occasionally dealing with Eugins. We have tools to delete them fairly easily, but sometimes they show up in large quantities and it’s a bit annoying.
One possible solution is for everyone’s first comment to need to be approved. A first stab at the implementation for this would be:
1) you post your comment as normal
2) it comes with a short tag saying “Thanks for joining less wrong! Since we get a fair bit of spam, first comments need to be approved by a moderator, which normally takes [N hours, whatever N turns out to be]. Sorry about that, we’ll be with you soon!”
3) Comments awaiting approval show up on moderator’s screen at the top of the page or something, with a one-click approval, so that it’s very unlikely to be missed. I think this could get the wait time down pretty low even with a smallish number of moderators.
The main downside here is that people’s first commenting experience wouldn’t be as good. My intent with step #2 was to smooth it over as much as possible. (i.e. if it just said “comment awaiting approval”, I’d think it be much worse).
I’m curious a) how bad people think this experience would be, and b) any other issues that seem relevant?
If in the first 10 comments of a user and including a link, hold for moderation.
Also make a safe list and anyone on the safe list is fine to post.
Hmm. Doing it only for links would def solve for spammers, which I think hits roughly 60% of the problem and is pretty good. Doesn’t solve for Eugins. Not sure how to weigh that.
(Still interested in a literal answer to my question “how bad is it to have your first post need to be approved?” which I don’t have much of an intuition for)
The other option is to hold comments from new accounts (or accounts with low posts) with certain keywords—for moderation.
I.e. “plumber”, a phone number etc.
I think if you specify “you have less than 10 comments and you posted a link” to let people know why their comment is being held for “a day” or so. It’s not a big deal.
If it was not explained then it would be more frustrating.
If you capture all comments while an account is suspected spam, that would be okay.
As long as LW isn’t high-profile enough to attract custom-written spambots, a possible easier alternative would be to combine a simple test to deter human spammers with an open proxy blacklist like SORBS. This strategy was very effective on a small forum I used to run.
Using a list like SORBS sounds good. I actually think the test might be more annoying than waiting to get your post approved. (or, maybe less annoying, but causing more of a trivial inconvenience)
Also some of them are businesses. Like plumbers. You could call them up and tell them that they are paying spammers to post in irrelevant places and they should ask for their money back.