Underneath the short stories thread there have been a number of spamming posts, some quite harmless, others to do with porn, but the worst is that there is one particular thread that has provided a link that puts a virus on your harddrive. I wouldn't mind putting myself forward to help in deleting these profiles especially seeing as they are coming in thick and fast and I have seen some new and regular users here posting in some of the threads. The possible danger in a moment of naivety could result in anyone clicking on the links out of harmless curiosity only to find their computer shuitting down from the viruses. Upgrade some trusted peeps here to mod status. I'm sure they can help in keeping this site safe for the genuine members here.
I have to agree, the porn is getting annoying... Max, Ari, Frost, and a few others(actually as bunch of people could be trusted with modship) would be quite helpful in this instance. Wow, I just looked at the SS section...it is Full of spam, mostly porn.
no idea what can be done about it, but please, ditching the porn would be great. i get the idea that there are a fair number of minors on this website. that's twice-over a no-no. ennubi
Yes I agree that the porn posts are getting out of hand here, but all we can do is keep reporting them and don't worry the mods and admin will get arounf to it. They have very busy workloads and they are doing the best that they can, just keep reporting these posts and they will get around to it. I just hope that no one is actually going to these links, as they could be potentially harmful, some of them actually continue to fill up your accounts with spam. People remember to keep reporting and under no circumstances go into the links ok. Ariella
Sorry Ariella, but the truth is some of those spam posts have been here for many days, over a week in several cases, and were reported when they were first posted. There's no excuse for not removing them by now. It's poor forum management. It gives the impression that those running the site don't care about the place, so why should we? It's not as if the site hasn't had enough problems recently. Cheers, Rob
Robert, that was skating on thin ice there sorry. I dont know how you actually meant it but it came across to me as more than a little rude. Im pretty sure we tried to rule out stuff like that in the last problems we had. Its my personal experience that posts like that dont work, Ive done my fair share of them and never has it worked. Now, I have to admit I only check my emails about once every two or three days BUT when I do I make sure to go to ALL the reported threads so I dont know how it was there for a week Robert. I agree with Ariella and suggest that the members just keep reporting the bad stuff. IF after two or three days something isn't gone then report again. If its a week, instead of going crazy on us mods, just go crazy trying to get someone to delete the bad stuff. (God I hope that made sense....)
The problem here, Nexus, is not my post. It's the lack of effective forum management. Why should people like myself continue to report posts if nothing gets done? Maybe the forum needs moderators who check their email more frequently than every two or three days. Max has already volunteered. Cheers, Rob
There's around 15 or 16 spam posts in the Short Stories forum. Around half a dozen have been there for over a week. This is what people are talking about. Cheers, Rob
As an update, the thread that I am confident is the virus is the one made by the spam profile xrayjaketeta and had one comment by Ferret. I thought it was genuine until I clicked on the "game" link and - whoop - a virus uploads on my computer after trying to close the advertisement window when the original link wouldn't open up properly. This thread wouldn't exist if I hadn't have shut down my system, rebooted then scanned and dealt with it in the process of it trying to destroy my harddrive. Now it's personal and I'd love to help deal with all of this. As Robert has said, all it takes is a little bit of procrastination from the mods and something bad will happen. This is not a personal attack as we know that people have lives away from cyber space. It's due to the fact that there aren't enough people to help deal with the problem. *Hint* *Hint* I don't log into this site everyday but I do log on everyday to my computer itself for the purpose of e-mails. So if there are problems with spam I'm only an e-mail away...if no one else has the time to do it.
There have been similar problems at two other message boards I go to. One had it get so bad that the admins shut off registration. The other writing site I frequent has a lot of members registering just to spam. Most of these advertise cheap Rx drugs, and a good number are just porn. I do report them when I see them, but after a while it gets frustrating that that's all I can do about it. I get the impression that I'm not very trusted around here, but if you do decide to take on a couple extra mods to deal with the spam, I would be more than glad to help. Even if I am a little obnoxious sometimes, I really would make a good mod.
Robert you ask why should we continue to report them...because this is an amazing forum with a great bunch of members. And if we don't report these spam posts then we aren't doing our bit to help keep the forum user friendly. All we can do to help here is just continue to report these posts. Give the mods a chance to get it done is all you can do. This is an excellent forum and from what I have seen the mods are doing a great job to keep it all under control. Yeah ok so some spam has been there for a bit long, but hey just the other day I found a babies bottle that had been left in my car for a couple of days. Yeah it isn't the same thing, but it is easy to miss something every now and then. Give them a chance and just keep reporting and eventually the posts will be removed. Ariella
Ok, after my inbox was absolutely SWARMED with "Reported from Writing Forums" emails, I have decided that we need more moderators. I realise that trying to deal with all the posts myself is killing my computer, too many, so Im dealing with the emails labelled "today". I will be more active in checking my emails in the future ok? We need more moderators. I think though, that each moderator needs to be a senior member and has shown himself to be trusted and well...not crude. We cant just pick anyone because they volunteer, if given the chance very few people WOULDN'T volunteer to be moderator on a large forum. And also, if you see a link on a writing site that isn't about writing I advise you to NOT go to it.
Nexus I think you are all doing a wonderful job as i have seen other forums myslef now that don't really do much at all about the spam... But maybe a few extra mods is a good idea if you all seem to be gettin inundated like you say. After all you all obviously would like to enjoy the forum as much as the next member. So here is a pat on the back for all you mods, you are dong a great job. Ari
Tbh, the main problem at the moment is not needing more mods to delete this spam, but simply that it shouldn't be there in the first place at all. If it were normal members that were doing this, then it would be different, but it's not. The biggest issue here, is to come up with a way of getting rid of spambots altogether. At present the mods are discussing this with Spider.
You know, it's not that hard to delete a topic. You merely scroll to the "Mod options" window, find "delete topic", and click. Boom! It's gone. It shouldn't take you even ten minutes to clear out all the spam topics in there. It's not a matter of mods, it's a matter of just sitting down for a few minutes, then getting on with life.
Yeah, agreed. The fact that they happen is one problem and is not easy to solve. Removing them seems to be a problem in itself and shouldn't be as hard as it appears to have been lately.
But it's time spent on spambots, when there are other jobs to be doing as wel, checking to see that our REAL members are behaving etc. I delete ther threads when they are reported, yes. But like I said, instead of treating an ongoing problem, which we must, agreed, but w emust also find a solution. My point is, we shouldn't be even getting these spambots in the first place. Follow?
In that case why doesn't the site have one of those verification box thingymagigs that most other forums have when signing up? I take it that most spamming profiles are not actually created by a human sitting 24hrs in front of a computer but by some sort of a computer system designed to spread all this shit throughout the site as well as personal e-mail addresses? I know for I am constantly getting all this crap all day in my default e-mail inbox. Let's load up!
ItalianStallion has recently been added to the moderating team. I'm also looking into spam prevention methods, so please bear with me.
Yes, I have been recently added to the team so I am doing what I can to prevent the crap that is posted..... ItalianStallion
That is really great to hear and I haven't noticed very much spam of late so well done to the mod and admin team, it is great that you have listened to what we have all said and acted on it. Thankyou and great job. ari
This seems to be a very prevalent problem. I am a member on a bookclubforum and recently we were swamped with very explicit pictures that just suddenly appeared in posts all over the board. Although it was late evening for us in the UK, there may have been some children around from other continents. Luckily two mods were on and worked like fury for a while. I think the site closed for a few minutes, but not long, and I know that new registrations were stopped for a short while. We now have some software in place when people register...it seems to be working, but it is not infallable, as anyone determined to get through, will. I won't give you the link, given the subject of this thread and the fact that I am new, but the website address is as above if you want to find out what's been done. DP
