To the Forum, This really should go in Announcements, but I think it will be better seen here. If you have a thread, post or Resource that is awaiting moderation approval and it mysteriously disappears, please let us know. It may have been deleted it accidentally. One of the duties the mods have is to go through a Moderation Queue where spambot threads are quarantined. Sometimes these threads slip past quarantine and you see them in the forum, but for the most part you never see them. There's TONS of them to review, make sure they really are spam, and then delete them. This happens behind the scenes. Unfortunately, the platform also stores threads, posts and Resources waiting for approval in the same Queue. We mods are only human and quite capable of accidentally clicking a circle that should not be clicked in performance of our duties. Currently the two areas of greatest concern are the RPG room and the Contests area. If your thread disappears, please inform a mod. It's very easily restored, but if I didn't realize I deleted it, I clearly won't be aware that it needs to be restored. I need you to tell me! Many thanks, Wrey
I had a thread that solved world hunger, but it disappeared and I can't remember what I wrote. Now it is your fault for all the starving babies in Africa.
I'm confused. There's been a sudden up-tik in spam and now this thread which makes little sense to me if threads were being moderated before appearing. It does appear something happened recently allowing more spammers to register. Daniel needs to get on that, he must have left a door open like not requiring a Captcha or something. A lot of forums ban links until a minimum number of posts. We should have that.
What happens is the spam filter looks for a few things. IP addresses are dead give-aways, but this latest little batch-o-spammers are IPing out of places in the US. This, and satisfying some of the Personal Data with quasi-BS answers is making them look like real members to the filter. It catches most, some get through. The ones it catches, I still have to deal with, and they all fall in a single list - which looks nothing like it does in the forum proper - along with valid posts awaiting moderation.
I am of like mind. All of this, is in fact, the reason for the sphincter factor when the subject of links of any kind comes up with the mods.