# Counting spammers? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [December 30, 2016, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912 "2016-12-30T18:35:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Donpeyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a4c791/32.png) [@Donpeyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donpeyote)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912/21 "2016-12-31T18:05:05Z")
Shill Decoy posts and Proxy user assistance obfuscates their complete rooting out for some Mod/Admins & stealth mods … ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912/22 "2016-12-31T18:10:22Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > That’s the only thing that makes sense, but I wonder how their employers document it and why they don’t care about longevity of the post. They lose a little on each new post, but make it up in volume. ---
**Author:** ![Donpeyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a4c791/32.png) [@Donpeyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Donpeyote)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912/23 "2016-12-31T18:18:10Z")
Can one be a spammer if they NEVER post up a Linky or Pic evar ? ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912/24 "2016-12-31T19:05:16Z")
> [@Donpeyote](#): > > Can one be a spammer if they NEVER post up a Linky or Pic evar ? Absolutely. We quite often catch some of them before they post. We Google search their name or IP and find them on spam lists. Ban! ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912/25 "2016-12-31T19:46:34Z")
> [@Donpeyote](#): > > Shill Decoy posts and Proxy user assistance obfuscates their complete rooting out for some Mod/Admins & stealth mods … Forget the mods and their tools, we have a Acme Nuclear **Running Coach** Spam Buster. They don’t have a chance. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912/26 "2016-12-31T20:36:51Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > Absolutely. We quite often catch some of them before they post. We Google search their name or IP and find them on spam lists. Ban! And they can often be recognized from the name alone. Most nonsense names are spammers, and they recycle previously used names with variants. I keep an eye on the “Welcome to our newest member” line on the front page to catch them. There’s nothing better than banning one before he’s even posted. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912/27 "2016-12-31T20:43:20Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > There are also another 1/3 of people who register and never post. Why, I don’t know. It’s easily done and I’ve done it myself on a few occasions. You find a message board that you think interesting. You read a few threads and then register to enable you to reply whenever you feel so minded. Bookmark, go away and you end up never going back, distracted by other sites, regular sites, real life, etc. (My bookmarks seem as numberless as the sands of the Kalahari and equally impossible to navigate. I keep meaning to prune them but never get round to it.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2016, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912/28 "2016-12-31T21:55:27Z")
Interesting-- It never would have occurred to me to register for a board until such time as I decided that I did want to post. I’d often wondered about all of the zero-post members. IIRC, even before the era of stream-spam, the median number of posts per user was 1, and the mode was 0: A little over a third were zeroes, a little under a third were ones, and the remaining third was everyone else. Of course, the _average_ number of posts was up in the hundreds, due to the outliers with thousands of posts pulling up the average. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2017, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912/29 "2017-01-01T00:17:09Z")
I would register to enable the “go to next unread post” feature and to track what has been read. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/counting-spammers/775912.md?page=1)