12 replies to this topic

[Midnight Modding]

Handling spammers and warning/suspending people is still way more complicated than it should be. I hadn't used these features in years and now when I do it's kind of annoying. When marking as spam we can't make it delete posts, just unapprove them. Thus when I mark as spam I have to see those "queued" labels everywhere. Then when clicking those it does not redirect to a list of all queued posts and topics in one place. And the label will never go away unless I were to go one by one through a lot of spam posts and take action on them. Also there should be some quick flag as spam button in topic view where I don't have to go to profiles or the ACP to take care of it.

I think also "banning" members should be more clear because it can mean many things. Just as with the spam flagging there should be options as to what is done when the ban button is clicked, such as moving them into groups and deleting their posts. This may already be done for all I know. I haven't tried it yet, but am just basing my assumptions on the past that the banning process wasn't very streamlined. I always consider "ban" to mean moving them to a banned group.

[Midnight Modding]

Just to reiterate again.... the whoel system has a ton of issues. Now since I got sick of spammers I forced user then admin approval. I went in the ACP. It said 3 memebrs waiting for validation. I clicked the link and NONE OF THEM were listed at the link. It klept listing some guy I banned. There was now ay for me to get it to list axel wers, for example, other than manually typing his name by KNOWING he registered and finding him ina search to validate him. This is a real mess of a way to try to validate people. And to top that off I added a join reason field to the registration form where I could read it and see if it seemed legit and thre's no way to even read what theye ntered for it unless I go find them on the public side and read their profile! So I have to jump through 10 hoops to validate one person.

[Sandi_]

Use: (JG32) Forum Spammer IP & Email Check

You won't have to deal with them at all, because their registration is rejected when they attempt to sign up with your forum.

[Cyrem]

Just to reiterate again.... the whoel system has a ton of issues. Now since I got sick of spammers I forced user then admin approval. I went in the ACP. It said 3 memebrs waiting for validation. I clicked the link and NONE OF THEM were listed at the link. It klept listing some guy I banned. There was now ay for me to get it to list axel wers, for example, other than manually typing his name by KNOWING he registered and finding him ina search to validate him. This is a real mess of a way to try to validate people. And to top that off I added a join reason field to the registration form where I could read it and see if it seemed legit and thre's no way to even read what theye ntered for it unless I go find them on the public side and read their profile! So I have to jump through 10 hoops to validate one person.

Idk what is up with your board but it took me 2 clicks to get to the member validation screen. Click 'Members' then select the 'Validating' tab.... and I just hit approve on whoever.

I suggest creating a ticket to see why you have issues with retrieving the list if you already have your member lookup filters cleared.

I personally do not use the spammer function, I ban my users. The only cases where I use it is when I get those advertisers.. and usually they've only made 1 or 2 posts which take less then 30 seconds to delete.

I don't really have any issues with the spammer or validation system put in place.

[Midnight Modding]

Only thing I can figure is it's related to previous searches because I searched for someone before banning him and his name is showing in validating and everywhere else and nobody else's is. Searches shouldn't interfere with where the validating link goes. Anyway I'll look into it later and see if I have to clear soem search or something. I ahven't actually used any of these featrues really ever for the most part.

[Midnight Modding]

Now resetting searches fixes that issue and I do see my custom field now for some reason. However, everyone has it blank even though it's set to be required!

[Cyrem]

Now resetting searches fixes that issue and I do see my custom field now for some reason. However, everyone has it blank even though it's set to be required!

Maybe they are filling it out but it's not being saved or something?

[Midnight Modding]

But it's not anythign fancy, just a regular custom field set up through IPB. Anwyay I know this forum isn't for support, but either way it's been a bit annoying trying to figure out how to handle these spammers.

[canneverbe]

I'd also like a more simple way of handling spammers. My typical situation when I see a spam post is that I want to do all of the following:

- Delete post/topic
- Flag account as spammer (for IPS spam service)
- Further delete all posts this user has ever made (if the spammer made multiple posts before being discovered)
- Delete user from database

I do not want
- "Hidden" posts: Why should I do that? Spam is spam and needs to get out of everyone's sight, that includes my own sight as admin as well.
- Warn users: Spammers don't care about warnings, they probably posted using an automated method anyway.


With IPB this is still a bit complicated.
- 3 clicks: First I need to flag the user as spammer

• Click user name
• Click flag as spammer
• Click OK

- Then I need to go back to the forum and find and delete all posts the user has ever made. Assuming it is a topic with a single post (4 clicks):

• Click show moderation tools (*sigh*)
• Click topic moderation
• Click delete topic
• Click "Delete now" (aww, that is so unncessary)

- Further clicks if there are more posts...

- Then I would have to go to the admin panel (login again) and delete the user (feels like: infiniate amount of clicks, login is annoying). Actual clicks:

• Go to admin CP
• Enter user name
• Enter password
• Click Login
• Click into search field
• Paste user
• Click members
• Click user name of member
• Click Delete
• Confirm message

Seriously, this almost seems like making fighting spam purposely difficult. As much as I love the IPS spam service, it's clearly too much manual work if a spammer slips though, in fact, I currently skip the last of these steps because of that. Please simply the process of fighing spammers!

Expected clicks (that's 15 clicks difference, not even including the clicks required for browser tab navigation):

• Flag as spam, delete user and all posts
• Click OK (confirm)

[Midnight Modding]

I want basically the same thing other than I would maybe want them just moved to another group rather than totally deleted (a banned group). but I definitely don't like it hiding their posts which makes even more annoying hassle to get rid of them.

[Sandi_]

If you use the SFS hook/mod above there are no users or posts to get rid of. Their registration is rejected.

[saturnus]

Turn on the IPS Spam Service, install the Stop Forum Spam hook and have 3 different challenge questions that you change every couple of months.

Then you won't have much of a problem at all.

[canneverbe]

If you use the SFS hook/mod above there are no users or posts to get rid of. Their registration is rejected.

I will try this mod. However, seeing how spammers get around both reCaptcha and the IPB spam service, I am confident that even this mod will not completely prevent spammers, so getting rid of them easily must be possible anyway.

I also just got the latest IPB version, there are already great improvements over version 3.2. It seems like the posts of users that are flagged as spammers are now completely deleted, or at least no longer visible to admins either. Don't know yet if whole topics are also deleted if necessary, but I'm quite happy to see such improvements. I'd update my original post if editing was possible...