RFC: Communities and Spammer Counter-measures
RFC: Communities and Spammer Counter-measures
Do you think it would matter if we changed the communities from "Anyone can join" to "Anyone can ask to join" to reduce the amount of spam accounts and spam posts in the Delphi communities?
Option 1: Anyone can ask to join (mod approval)
We change to requiring moderator approval of people that want to join, which means a moderator will take a quick glance at the join request and try to figure out if the account is an actual person, or a spammer.
Option 2: Anyone can join (as it is today)
No change. This means spammer accounts can join. Today, we delete 8-12 porn spam accounts daily for all the communities, and spam posts can occur (typically 2-4 daily in the iOS / Android group).
Option 3: Spam? What spam? (I don't care)
You are fine with both option 1 and 2.
Do you think it would matter if we changed the communities from "Anyone can join" to "Anyone can ask to join" to reduce the amount of spam accounts and spam posts in the Delphi communities?
Option 1: Anyone can ask to join (mod approval)
We change to requiring moderator approval of people that want to join, which means a moderator will take a quick glance at the join request and try to figure out if the account is an actual person, or a spammer.
Option 2: Anyone can join (as it is today)
No change. This means spammer accounts can join. Today, we delete 8-12 porn spam accounts daily for all the communities, and spam posts can occur (typically 2-4 daily in the iOS / Android group).
Option 3: Spam? What spam? (I don't care)
You are fine with both option 1 and 2.
After hitting my choice I reread the post and now I wonder what is actually asked. The "Would you oppose such a change?" is a bit irritating.
ReplyDeleteUwe Raabe Better now?
ReplyDeleteLars Fosdal Perfect!
ReplyDeleteI also remove quite a bit of members here. At least those that are total obvious (ladies called "! Name")
ReplyDeleteDo we get a lot of spam? Is it worth anyone spending more time than they currently do? Is it worth mods removing accounts that don't appear to be real Delphi devs? What would be the downside to letting anyone join and not bothering to prune the users?
ReplyDeleteWhat about the downside of somebody wanting to join and having to wait some time before being able to post?
Also, if you ask members this question, they won't necessarily consider the extra effort that such a change will impose on the mods. Surely this is a decision for the mods to make.
David Heffernan We could stop removing it for a while, and then see what you think :)
ReplyDeleteNote that this does not prevent people from reading the community without joining. It means that a new want to be member can't make posts or comments until a moderator have approved him/her to join - hence stopping hit & run spammer fake accounts from planting their spam in the first place.
I just don't want you mods to have to take on more than is necessary. I'd put up with a degree of noise if it meant you had less work to do running this community.
ReplyDeleteCurrently the "!" porn spam accounts require the most effort. A ban doesn't help as they join with new accounts every day.
ReplyDeleteIt's a pretty wide spread problem:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LarsFosdal/posts/3ESERKn8ZjE
Why do you need to remove these accounts? What harm do they do to the community? Do they post?
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to tell you what to do, because I have no idea how difficult it is from your side to keep this place clean. As far as ! girls are concerned, since they don't post, I don't see they are doing much harm. You can find them almost in any community.
ReplyDeleteI would prefer "Anyone can join" solution, but at the end it is up to you.
Just as side note, last year I asked to join one of the Swift communities. I waited for almost a month for approval that never came, and then I just retracted my request.
At the end approving requests may prove to be as much work as you have now, and people may be reluctant to ask for joining.
I suppose that it is much easier to allow/deny new account to join before it can post than removing it and its posts it had made overnight.
ReplyDeleteArguments for removing the spam accounts: They tend to appear in the community member avatar list and as such they are click-bait - which is why the spammers keep creating them in the first place. They also inflate the community member numbers, which is more of an annoyance. Oddly enough, once the accounts are banned - it seems they still linger in the member lists, but as blue heads.
ReplyDeleteI encourage anyone that spots such an account to report it for spam or porn/nudity. Hopefully Google will find a way of pruning them eventually.
I suspect that you look at the member list and count it rather more than most. I know I never look at that, or ever care what the member count is. If they aren't posting, I see no harm in ignoring them. Perhaps a monthly purge if you so desire.
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't like being a springboard for porn.
ReplyDeleteNobody thinks that the mods here are springboards for porn. It's on Google and the spammers.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if you want to know how people would feel about having to wait for approval, then perhaps you should not be asking just the people who won't have to wait for approval. Any change isn't going to affect them.
David Heffernan
ReplyDeleteRef porn spam: Standing by, doing nothing, is your preferred action?
How people would feel about approaching a community they are still not member of, and which would require approval - is what is relevant. I assume most people have enough empathy to make an assessment of that.
Lars Fosdal Where is all this porn? I can't see it? It doesn't appear on the pages I look at. How many members spend their time looking at the list of members?
ReplyDeleteCommunity header - list of avatars, visible on "new" G+ web UI, and mobile app UIs. The reason you don't see it here, is that we continuously get rid of it.
ReplyDeleteExample: In your phone's G+ app, Open your communities page, find f.x. the "Git" community, and the "Chromecast Central" community. See anything similar?
Open any community and see the number of "!" accounts. Why are there so many? Because they make dozens of them every day, so that banning doesn't help.
We are fortunate to have small communities. The bigger ones are having much worse issues with active porn link post spammers.
Whether or not you get rid of it, I would never see any of that since I don't look at the list of members. And when I go to the git community, again I don't see anything bad. I have to drill down to the member list to see anything.
ReplyDeleteI personally don't see there to be a problem. It would be a problem to me if users started posting spam.
In which case option 3 is appropriate for you.
ReplyDeleteI voted 'anyone can join', because I like the idea of the community being easy to get started in. Any barrier is bad. I could easily see people going away because of even a small barrier to entry like that.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have no idea how much spam and how many bad accounts you delete daily, so if this is becoming a serious issue for you I'd vote for the first option. Consider it as "#2, unless the situation is bad, in which case #1".
I actually voted 1 to begin with but I think David Millington has it exactly right just there.
ReplyDeleteDavid Millington Same here.
ReplyDeleteI voted #1, but I would prefer #2 if the amount of posted spam was sufficiently low to be manageable.
ReplyDeleteI voted # 1. Why? Well, I suspect that our community is no longer growing rapidly, so new membership approvals wouldn't be overwhelming for mods. Also, not liking the spammy/bogus users. Asking to join for posting privileges is not uncommon in many communities. I understand David Millington point, but doubt that such a mod restriction would dissuade somebody that's truly interested in participating in the community.
ReplyDeleteI've set up Option 1 on the iOS & Android community for now - that's the one that gets the most spam posts. Leaving at option 2 for this community (and component directory) for now.
ReplyDeleteThanks Lars Fosdal, this lessens the amount of spam we see every morning.
ReplyDeleteLars Fosdal So what you're telling me is that I could be looking at less TObjects and more TNakedPeople and you're deleting it all instead??? :-(
ReplyDeleteAnd from another angle... we know lots of Russian virus writers use Delphi. If the spambot is written in Delphi would it be allowed to join? Or could we convert the spambot authors to Delphi and swell our ranks?
I speak softly, but carry a big (ban) stick.
ReplyDeleteDammit! I was trying the new G+ interface and didn't realize some of the posts I'm looking at, like this one, are extremely old. I still don't like the new interface. Distracting comment rotation/animation and minimized importance of counts for comments and "plus ones" keep me away
ReplyDelete