problem using the forum

bintin · Post by **bintin** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 2:09 pm

i've no idea where to post this..
problem using the forum

http://forums.textpad.com/profile.php?m ... ile&u=8702

notice I made one post, about an error trying to install textpad.
(2 posts including this one!)
but the one post I made isn't displaying.

Mike Olds · Post by **Mike Olds** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 2:25 pm

Apologies ahead if you are a legit poster. The forum has been plagued by spammers and unfortunately you fit the profile. Management will be checking your IP and various other criteria to make a final determination here and if you are cleared your post will be displayed again.

bintin · Post by **bintin** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 2:42 pm

Mike Olds wrote:Apologies ahead if you are a legit poster. The forum has been plagued by spammers and unfortunately you fit the profile. Management will be checking your IP and various other criteria to make a final determination here and if you are cleared your post will be displayed again.

well, it's probably a link to a picture on imageshack in a first post that set it off.

that picture is a screenshot of 2 error messages.

I don't see what else could be mistaken for a spammer.

Mike Olds · Post by **Mike Olds** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 2:53 pm

OK Bintin, again apologies and welcome to the board.

Post by **MudGuard** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 2:59 pm

I saw the post in the spam and wondered why THAT post was declared spam.

I just moved it to the "General" section.

Mike Olds · Post by **Mike Olds** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 3:18 pm

Hello MudGuard,

It was the combination of current-day registration, the link, and no details in the post (naturally they were in the images in the link, but I am not familiar with that site and am in no way going to click on links to find out.)

If this is too harsh or restrictive a technique for identification of possible spammers, I do not know another, better one and am open to suggestions.

bintin · Post by **bintin** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 3:50 pm

@mike olds

I've never seen spam that was on topic. See subject(which had the topic of the post).

Also, there was a line in the body of the post, describing the problem in the subject

And the website of the link, imageshack, is not bad. Try googling it.

I was not trying to sell you a toyota or get you to enter a user/pass on some webpage, or ask you to smuggle $300,000 out of the country. That's what spam looks like!

If you're trying to figure out a way to catch spammers.. one way of trying to catch a spammer before the post, may be to search for the username and see if they're registered on say 60 completely unrelated forums with 0 posts.. I've seen that sometimes, that may be a pattern of a spam-bot.

And if they've already made a post, then obviously check if the post is spam. You should know what spam looks like. I've never seen spam saying "error with certain software". And the subject as well as what I wrote in the body, made sense.

Mike Olds · Post by **Mike Olds** » Tue Jun 01, 2010 5:24 pm

Hello again Bintin,

Again apologies. I am just an ordinary, not very skillful user who is usually up at hours when everyone else is asleep which coinsides with the habits of many of the spammers here. I was drafted.

I do not claim clarivoyance and mgt set up a simple procedure for me: when in doubt, move it to spam and they will do some of the things you have mentioned. I am not in a position to actually run down the checklist.

On or off topic is not a good criteria here as the habit has been for spammers to simply copy a probable looking post and put their link at the bottom.

This may not be the best process possible, but it has almost eliminated spammers in the recent past.

Bob Hansen · Post by **Bob Hansen** » Thu Jun 03, 2010 2:47 am

I just wanted to expand a bit on Mike Olds comments. I also am a part time moderator, and one of our main functions is to keep the forum professional. We have limited time and tools to identify spammers. We do not have access to the forum software, so we cannot set filters or rules. I am not going to spend my time googling things that look suspicious. I am not going to click on unknown or questionable links. Signatures that are links are almost always tossed out.

I want to spend my time here learning more about how to use TextPad, and not being a full time babysitter. Thankfully, most of the posters on this forum are mature, ask real questions about the product and its usage, so it's not usually a tough thing to deal with. But we will still make mistakes, with the best intentions. When we suspect a spammer, we do not usually totally delete the posting, but move it to a special folder where the folks from Helios can determine if they want to make permanent blocks on the name/IP/Server, etc. or repost the message. Sometimes a clarifying request will be made to the poster to help in the decision. Sometimes it is really obvious they should be banned.

Let me take this opportunity to thank Mike Olds, and MudGuard, and the other moderators for their free time and help in keeping this a great forum.