Why let people post so many ads

[Alpha One Seven]

I see a constant barrage of people posting ads for skin this and male that and slim whatever. Why are these people allowed to post these here?
It's very annoying.
Please do something to stop it and prevent any further such postings.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's called "Forum SPAM", and yes it's annoying. I just cleaned up a bunch of them. Some nights, it's worse than others.

That being said, the Moderators here are volunteers, and are not paid. There isn't always coverage during the late-night hours.

Please, just let the Moderators do their job, and don't reply to or quote "SPAM" posts. You can use the "Report" button under the post to make sure that they don't get lost in the shuffle, however.

Thanks for understanding.

(Late-night) Moderator VirtualLarry

 

[Alpha One Seven]

A better method of vetting new members will help. Some sites require a members first 20 posts to be cleared by a moderator before it gets posted. That will help a lot.

 

[Perknose]

Thanks for your input, but we (and our members) are comfortable with our present procedures, which do not overburden our volunteer moderator resources during the overnight while also ensuring that all but the most querulous of our members remain satisfied and protected.

May I ask why, as a concerned member, you have never reported any of this spam that troubles you so? If you're not part of our solution, you are part of the problem . . . the very problem you are now using the limited resources of your time and intellect to complain about?

If you remain truly distraught by encountering a smattering of obvious spam amongst the thousands of legitimate posts during the late night hours, which we then remove with a very few hours of its appearance, may I suggest that you simply skip over it?

If you are somehow unable to resist simply skipping over the infinitesimally small percentage of, again, obvious spam until it is promptly and permanently removed in the morning, or somehow unable (or unwilling?) to pitch in and use the report button on same, the one remaining solution for you is to quit our forums which disappoint you so and move on to one of those other sites whose procedures you so admire . . . unless, of course, it is a site from which you have already been banned.

You moving on would, I daresay, be a mutually beneficial solution. Seize the moment, good sir! There is no time like the present.

 

[Alpha One Seven]

Thanks for your input, but we (and our members) are comfortable with our present procedures, which do not overburden our volunteer moderator resources during the overnight while also ensuring that all but the most querulous of our members remain satisfied and protected.

May I ask why, as a concerned member, you have never reported any of this spam that troubles you so? If you're not part of our solution, you are part of the problem . . . the very problem you are now using the limited resources of your time and intellect to complain about?

If you remain truly distraught by encountering a smattering of obvious spam amongst the thousands of legitimate posts during the late night hours, which we then remove with a very few hours of its appearance, may I suggest that you simply skip over it?

If you are somehow unable to resist simply skipping over the infinitesimally small percentage of, again, obvious spam until it is promptly and permanently removed in the morning, or somehow unable (or unwilling?) to pitch in and use the report button on same, the one remaining solution for you is to quit our forums which disappoint you so and move on to one of those other sites whose procedures you so admire . . . unless, of course, it is a site from which you have already been banned.

You moving on would, I daresay, be a mutually beneficial solution. Seize the moment, good sir! There is no time like the present.

I have. I have reported a lot of them in fact.The problem is that there are so many it takes up most of the page in new posts and you have to do a lot of scrolling to try to use the forum. It's very disruptive to the functioning of the forum overall, if it wasn't they would just be left there and no one would care, but they are removed eventually so it must make a difference, right? As virtual Larry said, it is annoying and some nights it is very heavy.
Perhaps you should look before you leap or just, as you say, move on.
Thanks

 

[esquared]

"The problem is that there are so many it takes up most of the page in new posts and you have to do a lot of scrolling to try to use the forum. It's very disruptive to the functioning of the forum overall."

No, no and no, do not exaggerate the amounts of spam here. There are not so many. I can tell you that for any 24 hour period,
on the average, there are no more than 60-80 spam posts. The majority of them, 60-70% are posted from 8PM-2 AM PST and the mod night crew removes the majority
in 30 minutes or less. Many times, within minutes as I am on duty during this night-time. From 2AM to 5PM we may have a dozen or so, spam posts sitting until the mods on the east coast check in.
Since we have multiple new mods to help deal with this problems, the spam issue has never been better.

"The problem is that there are so many it takes up most of the page in new posts"
Again, no. Most of the spam posts are of the one paragraph variety and do not take up the whole page. That simply is not true.
There are a few posts that do however take up a lot of space, and they are the spammers who post the movie links, and those happen 2-3 times a night at most. Remember that we have 43 sub forums and 60-80 spams posts per night, so the spam is going to be spread out.
It is not all in one single subforum.

"But they are removed eventually so it must make a difference, right?
Perhaps you should look before you leap or just, as you say, move on."

Being passive-aggressive just won't fly around here.

 

[esquared]

A better method of vetting new members will help. Some sites require a members first 20 posts to be cleared by a moderator before it gets posted. That will help a lot.

Do the math on this one. 100 new members a day, say average 2 posts per day. Day one, we look at 200 posts to approve.
Day two, same thing, but were are also looking at the posters from Day one, also. Another 200 posts to approve + 200 more.
By the end on 10 days (to hypothetically cover the 20 posts, at 2/day), we are trying to monitor thousands of posts for approval. This just keeps going with new posters signing up daily.

Volunteer mods for this? Who is going to look over thousands of posts for approval?
You didn't think this one through, did you?