But what if he IS on salary? And what if he’s a fan, and like so many of us, reads the SDMB at to escape his boring work? So any time his supervisor comes by he just flips his screen and starts typing a SPAM post . . .
:dubious:
But we don’t restrict new users from posting links (although other sites do), so his making posts without links and then editing them in is just wasted effort on his part. He’s using a strategy adapted to other boards that is pointless on this one. So we wouldn’t gain anything by this strategy.
As **engineer **says, he also makes dummy posts as a strategy for boards that require a certain number of posts before posting links, even though that also is wasted effort on his part.
As noted, he doesn’t seem to pay much attention to what strategies we use. He does a lot of stuff that takes more effort even though we don’t use that particular method of blocking spam. And as I mentioned, these days he almost never tries to post more than one message from a given username/email address. He abandons them and generates new ones even before the previous one is banned.
I see spam less than once a month on the SDMB.
I guess I don’t get around much.
You probably don’t get up early enough. I’m at work and beginning to kill time on the internet at 6:00 AM East-coast time, and there will be up to a half dozen or so posts in GQ, typically with a subject line that advertises Android phones but the body is a bunch of links to alleged streaming sites. The posts are disappeared by 7 or 8 -ish.
Yep. The guy in Bangladesh is posting while I sleep. Sometimes ecg is awake due to insomnia and fries the little bugger.
Would it be possible to restrict the ability to edit posts? Make it Members only or something?
I can see one spammer buying a membership and sharing the login info. The Marketplace will become a vast swamp of spam.
(not entirely serious)
See posts #19 and #22 above.
There are various methods to combat spam. The above is one of them. Another method is to hold a member’s first few posts until a moderator has checked it.
Each methods has its advantages, and its flaws. It is sometimes very inconvenient for new members of a forum if they can’t post a link. I remember one time a couple of years ago when I wanted advice on a particular repair job. I registered at a DIY forum to ask, but was blocked from linking to photographs of the problem.
I prefer the way it’s done on the SDMB, where new members aren’t stymied the way I was. The price of that is occasionally a spam message gets through. It’s just something we have to live with.
Right. We regard the current level of spam we get as annoying but not sufficiently bad to justify implementing solutions that might discourage new members.
It should be noted that this solution would actually make a lot more work for the mods. As it is we only check suspicious or reported posts. If we had to check every single post by a newbie it would cost a lot more time for no real benefit.