Top-post. I have only praise for how this difficult situation has been handled.
Thanks for the report. Regards, Dave On Apr 22, 2012, at 7:22 PM, F C. Costero wrote: > The forum volunteers would like to inform the PPMC of recent events > and actions on the user forum. I offered to write this initial message > since the moderators have had a long and frustrating day. I hope I > avoid missing any important details. > Spam postings have been an increasing problem this year as noted in > Hagar's summaries posted on Jan. 31, Feb. 29 and April 1. > http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=46497 > > In the last week and especially the week end, the problem has gotten > so bad that the forum became nearly unusable. Hundreds of message > would be posted in a few hours. Nearly all of the posts were for > streaming video sites, with absolutely no attempt to disguise their > intent. I personally saw more than 400 spam messages listed in > response to the View New Messages link after being off line for less > than 12 hours and moderators had probably been on line in the meantime > deleting spam and banning users. Adding a dead time to user accounts > so that messages could not be posted in rapid succession did not > sufficiently reduce the spam. Today the registration process was > briefly disabled to allow the moderators to remove messages and > implement a user group for New Users. Hagar posted the following > message: > > "I've taken some immediate action (sorry, unilateral but something had > to be done to allow new users quickly): > - I've reactivated the registration (by mail for the moment, not by mod) > - I've activated the Newly registered and I'm restricting their > permissions, preventing any BBCode > - I've set the limit to 10 posts to get to the Registered status (not > sure if it's automatic or not yet) > > Perhaps we should see how it works as a test. I think that the > spammers do use BBCode for their links. If disabling it is enough, > perhaps these basic counter measures will have some effect. > > Next step would be the moderation of posts from the Newly registered users." > > After these changes a few spam messages have appeared, but at a > greatly reduced rate. This may be a result of the changes or just the > time of day at the spam source. As Hagar stated in his message, the > next step will be moderation of posts from new users. This is not a > desirable action because it will make the forum less accessible and > will greatly increase the moderator work load. If implemented, it may > require the appointment of more moderators. > > I believe any suggestions from the wider Apache community for > addressing this problem would be very welcome. Events have moved very > quickly and there has not been time for the volunteers and moderators > to have a thorough discussion of how to handle the new spam > environment. > > Francis
