A Question About Forum Reports (1 Viewer)

[The_Doc_Man]

@Jon, have you ever stated a policy about handling reports when there is no immediately obvious violation, just a little suspicion? And do you feel it important to clear out old reports? If so, how old is "suspicious, but old enough to just drop it"? At the moment of this post, we have 8 reports, all of which reflect the chance of SPAM. Some of them relate to posts that have not actually started outright as SPAM but that "rang alarm bells."

As a moderator, I take it as my duty to occasionally "clean things up" which is why I do a "SPAM clean" when that automated report comes up. You also know I'll intervene when someone crosses a line. I am curious, though. Maybe I'm a little heavy-handed, though I try to leave things as just warning someone that a line got crossed. I may have sometimes overdone it.

I believe at least one report exists for which the user has now been banned and the content has been deleted. I'm about to remove that report - but we have often had reports that hung on for a while. I'm not saying I'm going all OCD on this, but ... is there a policy? Or have you not considered it that important? You know I try to be fair, and it's not like the reports are visible to general users. But I see the reports as a need to do something, and I don't always know what to do. I guess it comes with the territory of being (or trying to be) a conscientious moderator.

 

[Jon]

There is no policy as such. Instead, just use your judgement. As I see it, if someone has a whiff of spam, experience has taught me that it is 95% chance of being spam, even if no "offence" has yet been committed. If there is a policy, it would be to consider "whiff = spam", yet not taking action and letting their posts perculate for a while. Spammers will typically go back and edit their post after a thread has died down, inserting their links or product mentions.

It isn't a problem to me having a number of Reports sitting there, turning into fine wine. The shorter we keep the Reports list, the more the spam that gets through. I think recently we seem to have had several new members who drop posts in non-Access areas and then do their dirty afterwards.

What I tend to do is periodically go back to the potential violator and see if they have added any new posts or edited old posts. Sometimes I also check their IP addresses, or if they are using a VPN. In most cases, just looking at the IP address from the usual suspects countries give you an answer of whether its spam or not.

Question: Why would someone come to a Microsoft Access discussion forum and go to the trouble to sign up if they only post in non-Access areas? In my opinion, its because they are most likely to be spammers!

The more experience you get with dealing with these things, the more it all looks like spam!

 

[GPGeorge]

There is no policy as such. Instead, just use your judgement. As I see it, if someone has a whiff of spam, experience has taught me that it is 95% chance of being spam, even if no "offence" has yet been committed. If there is a policy, it would be to consider "whiff = spam", yet not taking action and letting their posts perculate for a while. Spammers will typically go back and edit their post after a thread has died down, inserting their links or product mentions.

It isn't a problem to me having a number of Reports sitting there, turning into fine wine. The shorter we keep the Reports list, the more the spam that gets through. I think recently we seem to have had several new members who drop posts in non-Access areas and then do their dirty afterwards.

What I tend to do is periodically go back to the potential violator and see if they have added any new posts or edited old posts. Sometimes I also check their IP addresses, or if they are using a VPN. In most cases, just looking at the IP address from the usual suspects countries give you an answer of whether its spam or not.

Question: Why would someone come to a Microsoft Access discussion forum and go to the trouble to sign up if they only post in non-Access areas? In my opinion, its because they are most likely to be spammers!

The more experience you get with dealing with these things, the more it all looks like spam!

FWIW. The admins at UtterAccess have to deal with very similar questions. I think it's safe to say that after a while, the "look and feel" of spam posts begins to make itself clear. The "spam set up posts" are fairly obvious, I believe, once you've seen a large number of them. I've been wrong, too. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck selling something.

 

[conception_native_0123]

But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck selling something.

it's a pigeon.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Actually, Adam, if you are buying anything from a duck, YOU are the pigeon.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

Actually, Adam, if you are buying anything from a duck, YOU are the pigeon.

I now have the image of Adam sat in a monastery, pigeon holed, wearing his monk's robes, head shaved looking uncannily like a pigeon!

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

I can't see any reason for keeping the list.

For a new user, l delete at any hint of spam.

 

[Jon]

For a new user, l delete at any hint of spam.

You are certainly right in thinking that a hint of spam means it probably is spam. I am just trying to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, hence letting a few Reports develop a nice cheesy rind.

 

[GPGeorge]

At one point in our history, UA had a spam problem, and we got pretty good at spotting the pattern, so we could bop them on the head immediately, but I recall at least one occasion when the OP was legit and complained to the site owner about being banned. We learned to be a bit slower with the ban hammer.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Which is why the "reported" list is important... it is like online notes as we pass a problem to another moderator, or to Jon. So of course I don't want to do away with the list and don't want to dump recent entries. I just wondered about "how long is long enough" - and the answer appears to be "take a wait-and-see attitude."

 

[Jon]

Personally, I think we catch the spam pretty quick on this site. Quite often I do to nuke a post and it is gone already.

What is trickier to catch is edits to posts done a while back.

 

[conception_native_0123]

I now have the image of Adam sat in a monastery, pigeon holed, wearing his monk's robes, head shaved looking uncannily like a pigeon!

after everything I've done for you, how could you tony? =(