I recently ran across a spam post by a new user. I was unable to report it directly because the three dot symbol that contains the flag icon was not displayed. The post only showed the link icon and the bookmark icon. I had to report the thread and specify which post I was flagging. Is that normal for new user posts?
User categories are to the right of user names and are usually guest, Member, Charter Member and occasionally Registered User. That’s not counting the various Mod, SDSAB or custom titles that people paid for way back when. I recently ran across a couple of posters that had nothing at all in that spot. How does that happen?
That could be. I think this is the first time I’ve ran across a spammer since we switched to Discourse. It seems spammers are usually caught by the weirdos that read the board by the latest posts method. Which is clearly the wrong way to read, but what can you do?
Seems to me that I recall @running_coach reports quite a few, maybe he can weigh in.
That’s my experience: the software seems to be smart enough to know that when something attracts a bunch of flags quickly, it represents a legitimate issue, and more flags will just be noise for the mods, so it locks stuff up.
Discourse seems to have better filtering so less spam gets through and the spam that comes through doesn’t always look “spammy”. Plus the way I used to find spammers was to look at vBull’s “newest member” link and increment the used ID number backwards. Since our user number isn’t visible, that doesn’t work. Also, I could recognize new usernames and check those out. not as easy with the generic avatars here.
That sounds familiar, but I thought that x number of flags would hide the post until a mod could look it over.
This one was outright spam, a one liner first post with a link.
I didn’t know about the new poster thing, I always thought people that found the most spammers were those that did the “new posts” options. Thanks for chiming in.
I mostly have seen it on an occasional long gone poster, but @Thing.Fish, from 2020, is blank. @Thing_Fish, who may be the same poster from 2001, shows as a Guest. Maybe some mess up during the switch to Discourse.
That’s when I see them also. Since I read by Forum, I don’t really expect to see any during the day, as there are so many other posters online they are reported before I get there.
Discourse flags a lot of posts as “probably spam” and if i log on early in the morning, sometimes I’ll get as many as half a dozen notifications of “likely spam” posts. Those are sometimes hidden, maybe depending on how likely they are to be spam. So most users don’t see those posts.
The system is pretty good, and most of what it flags IS spam.
You’re my go to guy on Discourse stuff! If you don’t know, it may be unknowable.
Yes, I’ve read Discourse is a lot better at screening for spam. I just thought that the spam posts were all disappeared until a mod looked at them. Maybe I did just catch it in the middle of automatic removal.
If a mod removes a spam post, is there a closed/opened thread marker when you do it? This one just disappeared after I reported it.
Looks like you are right. I know that’s not how it has always worked since we switched to Discourse. Maybe an update changed something in the status field. (that sounds kind of science fictiony, like reversing polarity of deflector shields)
The SD is an outlier because we’re using custom titles. Most D-boards have a different setup, one where you can choose your title from a list of badges that you’ve gotten. I wouldn’t say that it’s unknowable, but you’ll probably need an admin (maybe even a dev) to tell you the hows and whys.
Looks like new user Pythonette is blank also. Maybe it is everyone that joined after the switch to Discourse. I checked @DavidNRockies, who I remembered as fairly new (Sept. 2020) and he has no status either. Can’t believe I didn’t notice this for 2 years. I don’t see a way to get a list of posters by join date to confirm that.
Did you have to contact @engineer_comp_geek to be able to post after the switch? I think Discourse automatically replaced spaces with underscores, but I’m not certain.
The SD is an outlier because we’re using custom titles. Most D-boards have a different setup, one where you can choose your title from a list of badges that you’ve gotten. I wouldn’t say that it’s unknowable, but you’ll probably need an admin (maybe even a dev) to tell you the hows and whys.