Thanks for posting it, some interesting changes and discussion. My general feeling is that he's going overboard with trying to find ways to prevent a problem that took a lot of effort to cause....
Thanks for posting it, some interesting changes and discussion.
My general feeling is that he's going overboard with trying to find ways to prevent a problem that took a lot of effort to cause. When someone is so dedicated to finding a way to spam your site that they were having fake conversations in your IRC channel while slowly requesting 10 separate invites, they're going to be willing to look for holes in just about anything you implement.
Those are the situations where you really need knowledgeable human intervention, both from actual moderators as well as users noticing something fishy and reporting it. If you try to prevent it entirely through technical means you're probably going to end up seriously hobbling legitimate users as part of it, which is what happened here with effects like raising the threshold before users can invite others from 7 days to seventy and making it difficult or impossible for people to keep submitting their own blogs.
I think as programmers it's always our instinct to want to come up with a technical/automatic method to deal with a problem, but sometimes it's perfectly fine to just handle some things manually unless they turn into a widespread, common issue. Communities will always have issues that you can't neatly address with a technical solution, and trying can end up hurting your good users just as much as the bad ones.
I remember on Reddit there were moderators like DiggDejected who wound up becoming Spam experts, usually going as far as to be able to identify and isolate spamming rings and spammer alt accounts....
I remember on Reddit there were moderators like DiggDejected who wound up becoming Spam experts, usually going as far as to be able to identify and isolate spamming rings and spammer alt accounts. Most of these things you could not reliably detect through automated means, it was usually a question of going through posting histories and analysing submission behaviours using 3d-party tools. What was required for effective spam control was less automation and more ways for moderators to gain insight into account behaviours.
May I have one as well if it isn't too much trouble? I didn't want to message you without your permission (if it's okay, I'll send you my email). I'm studying computer science and extremely...
May I have one as well if it isn't too much trouble? I didn't want to message you without your permission (if it's okay, I'll send you my email). I'm studying computer science and extremely interest in tech (especially IoT, cloud computing, and cybersecurity). I would really appreciate it.
But in regards to the main topic of this thread, I don't believe there will ever be an excellent solution to handle these types of issues. If someone is that determined to spam the site, they will sadly find a way to do so... even if it means waiting 70+ days to do so. One common way forums/sites combat this is to set various types of requirements such as the user must achieve a certain post count, etc. However, that tends to lead to users spamming comments, etc. to work around the requirements. At the end of the day, what it comes down to is that those motivated nefarious users will always find one way or another to break the rules and achieve their goals. Maybe someone else knows of a much more viable and successful strategy to combat such issues without harming the community?
Thanks for posting it, some interesting changes and discussion.
My general feeling is that he's going overboard with trying to find ways to prevent a problem that took a lot of effort to cause. When someone is so dedicated to finding a way to spam your site that they were having fake conversations in your IRC channel while slowly requesting 10 separate invites, they're going to be willing to look for holes in just about anything you implement.
Those are the situations where you really need knowledgeable human intervention, both from actual moderators as well as users noticing something fishy and reporting it. If you try to prevent it entirely through technical means you're probably going to end up seriously hobbling legitimate users as part of it, which is what happened here with effects like raising the threshold before users can invite others from 7 days to seventy and making it difficult or impossible for people to keep submitting their own blogs.
I think as programmers it's always our instinct to want to come up with a technical/automatic method to deal with a problem, but sometimes it's perfectly fine to just handle some things manually unless they turn into a widespread, common issue. Communities will always have issues that you can't neatly address with a technical solution, and trying can end up hurting your good users just as much as the bad ones.
I remember on Reddit there were moderators like DiggDejected who wound up becoming Spam experts, usually going as far as to be able to identify and isolate spamming rings and spammer alt accounts. Most of these things you could not reliably detect through automated means, it was usually a question of going through posting histories and analysing submission behaviours using 3d-party tools. What was required for effective spam control was less automation and more ways for moderators to gain insight into account behaviours.
Would anyone have a lobsters invite to share? It sounds like a great complement to tildes for tech-focused content.
Sent! Thanks!
May I have one as well if it isn't too much trouble? I didn't want to message you without your permission (if it's okay, I'll send you my email). I'm studying computer science and extremely interest in tech (especially IoT, cloud computing, and cybersecurity). I would really appreciate it.
But in regards to the main topic of this thread, I don't believe there will ever be an excellent solution to handle these types of issues. If someone is that determined to spam the site, they will sadly find a way to do so... even if it means waiting 70+ days to do so. One common way forums/sites combat this is to set various types of requirements such as the user must achieve a certain post count, etc. However, that tends to lead to users spamming comments, etc. to work around the requirements. At the end of the day, what it comes down to is that those motivated nefarious users will always find one way or another to break the rules and achieve their goals. Maybe someone else knows of a much more viable and successful strategy to combat such issues without harming the community?
I’ve also requested one. Thanks!
Hey I know this is a bit late but would you be able to give me an invite?