Messages in controlling spam

Message from Th Clvr Mnky

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:00:17 GMT

controlling spam
One problem is that spammers don't necessarily care that their URLs are formed correctly, do they? It ends up being a war of attrition, and spammers will just change their tactics to sell you shoes or hats or drugs.

They attack forums and comments to hack SEO results, I think, so whether or not the URL is good or not doesn't really matter to them. I think we'd see tactics change to get around the URL regexp so that they would still get comments published. Even a busted text link will still attract some sort of search engine result (they hope.)

Message from Perkin-warbeck

Tue, 31 May 2011 18:43:42 GMT

controlling spam
I have no personal experience with such sites, but a Google search shows that it is a common practice. I also like Iko Tikashi's recent suggestion (in another discussion). This is the wikipedia approach -- allowing plus members to tag comments as spam (the policy of what to do with those tags is to be determined).

Message from Steffen Fagerström Christensen

Tue, 31 May 2011 14:36:57 GMT

controlling spam
I should probably add to this, but find myself agreeing 100% with clvrmnky: Our bind is exactly that we want to keeps stuff open for commenting, and on the backend we try to block and ban as many IP addresses as possibly from spamming our servers.

Are there other examples of people doing the no-external-links thing well?

Message from Perkin-warbeck

Tue, 31 May 2011 14:06:59 GMT

controlling spam
We already have the option to block comments from non-members. Why not also have the option to block comments from members who link to external web sites? It's just an option, and not everybody would use it. I would.

Message from Th Clvr Mnky

Tue, 31 May 2011 13:05:51 GMT

controlling spam
This was discussed a long time ago in another thread.

The overarching paradigm of 23 is "sharing", and there is a desire by many to keep 23 open to all, including non-members. I appreciate this, because no one is going to sign up for yet another service just to see and comment on my pictures. Sharing links is an important part of that for many (though not so much for me, though I also do not have a large problem with spam comments.)

Basically, there is no perfect solution for combating spam. It will always be a trade-off between convenience and correctness.

We've seen a big improvement since 23 installed the anti-spam service a few years back.

Message from Perkin-warbeck

Tue, 31 May 2011 03:56:24 GMT

controlling spam
Here's an idea: Since most spammers want you to visit their site, 23hq could disallow external links in comments. Or, only allow "plus" members to embed external links.