Can we PLEASE go to forum moderation? the allowance of spam is disrepectful to all of us users.

sam detweiler

(12.5k●6●195●201) Mar 05 '14, 7:37 a.m.

everyday we get more spam. at least 10, sometimes more

can we please do something useful? you KNOW we will have to use a moderator when we go with automation, at least for a few months while u tweak the algorithm (against those constantly trying to get on anyhow)..

so lets do it NOW.. make this a really professional place..

again, YOU don't have to bear the total load.. turn this into a community effort.. every other forum I participate in does this.
one I've been a member of for 15 years, and not ONE single piece of spam has ever made it thru. cause its PEOPLE checking..

2 votes

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Francesco Chiossi

Mar 05 '14, 7:54 a.m.

I agree with Sam that some action is needed.

Would it be possible to get a tag based system?
When a question is tagged as spam it gets hidden from the questions view, while waiting for a moderator to delete it and ban the user.
Abuse of the system can be prevented by making the reputation requirement for retagging a question high enough, and reset the reputation of repeated offenders.

sam detweiler

Mar 05 '14, 8:10 a.m.

I want to be more aggressive.. 1st 10 (random number 1-20) posts are moderated.

the current '5 reports a day' counter doesn't work . usually I get 2, then it tells me my 5 is used up.

Francesco Chiossi

Mar 05 '14, 8:16 a.m.

I indeed get the same issue with the number reports... not sure if it's calculated in a 24h (or longer) window rather that a day, but rarely I can use 5; and even that would not be enough.

Ralph Schoon

FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER Mar 05 '14, 9:07 a.m.

I have another Job, this is more a chore than an honor. The other admins are doing their best as well, under the same conditions.

I scan the forum around once an hour or more often - if in the office and also scan for the unanswered questions and ban the obvious candidates. I also often go back a few days on these. Since I do that on a regular basis in my timezone I amrelatively sure I catch most of them, if I have the time. Retag suspicious candidates as spam to help us, if we miss anything.

sam detweiler

Mar 05 '14, 9:16 a.m.

I can only report.. I cannot retag (as far as I know) others posts.

maybe u are not the right person to be a moderator.

5 answers

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2 votes

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Millard Ellingsworth

FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER (2.5k●1●24●31) Mar 05 '14, 3:12 p.m.

Maybe this will help: I have bumped the number of items you can flag each day to 50. If a post gets flagged at least 3 times, it should be automatically hidden. This won't stop spam, but from an "active moderation" perspective, if folks flag what they see, these messages should quickly disappear from view.

Forum admins should periodically checked the flagged posts lists and clean these up and ban users as needed. This is not a long-term solution -- I don't think the spammers will ever stop trying. But it should make possible more of a community policing approach along the lines of what @sdetweil has been encouraging until we get a real solution in place.

1 vote

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sam detweiler

Mar 05 '14, 8:27 p.m.

thank you.. that is something at least. . well, how much reputation do u need to wield this new power?

I can see some mischief

Francesco Chiossi

Mar 06 '14, 2:38 a.m.

Thanks a lot, that should help.

Francesco Chiossi

Mar 13 '14, 8:31 a.m.

The flag 3 times feature doesn't seem to work.

This post was flagged 3 times but it's still visible in the list of questions:
https://jazz.net/forum/questions/145371/meanwhile-miami-is-also-on-the-road

Millard Ellingsworth

FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER Mar 13 '14, 12:38 p.m.

That's unfortunate. The forum software is configured to hide that after it has been flagged 3 times.

Work and testing continues on multiple fronts to acquire a successful content checker.

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Millard Ellingsworth

FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER (2.5k●1●24●31) Mar 05 '14, 12:27 p.m.

@sdetweil, your offer to help moderate is noticed and appreciated (all the way up the management chain). The problem is that active moderation is not a feature of the forum software on which jazz.net/forum is built. It simply isn't. I would have turned it on by now if I could. I feel everyone's pain -- like @rschoon, I try to drop in many times during the day to help keep this cleaned up.

We have enabled all of the available defenses: email validation is required to post and you still have to complete a recaptcha until you get even more reputation points. The forces spamming our forum are registering as new users, validating their email address and then completing a recaptcha to post. The message filtering capability I was testing proved to be insufficiently reliable at this time.

Looking at the top 50 questions on the list, 16 are perfectly valid questions from users with 6 or fewer reputation points (just like any spammer). As annoying as the spam is, I'd personally find it more annoying to slow down responses to these users who are trying to get answers about how to use our products so they can get back to work. There's not much point to running a forum that new users can't use.

I promise you that jazz.net management is aware of the issue -- I was chatting with head of the management team while I was composing this. We continue to look for a solution that is reliable and acceptable to our lawyers.

0 votes

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sam detweiler

(12.5k●6●195●201) Mar 05 '14, 12:55 p.m.

Thanks for the feedback. I won't mark this as the accepted answer, cause I don't.

the value of RTC to IBM (and it partner network) should outweigh the little extra effort of some folks time.

the pain caused to the IBM folks would be the motivator to make it automated and real.

the pain to the community should be the driving force.

sorry, I don't ever tell my users that its hard for me to stay after work to solve their problems.. I don't ever expect a service rep to walk away from a line of customers cause its their lunch time (I see it happen all the time, and these are the kind of providers I try to stay away from),

I know I am on a lot more than most.. I believe a short time of active moderation will make the problem go away, and with a small amount of effort by a few folks (community elbow grease), there is no large burden for any one person.

you already do this same action on 'report'.. thanks a moderator will be around soon.

if you add that to a moderated users posts, they will understand..

the other sites I am on block posting pics, sending private notes to others, getting private notes from others for the first now 10 posts over 10 days (coming down from 20 posts over 20 days)

my ten cents worth

0 votes

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Millard Ellingsworth

FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER Mar 05 '14, 1:36 p.m.

> I believe a short time of active moderation will make the problem go away

I agree and it really isn't a feature of our forum software package. The only options we have at the moment are to significantly raise the bar to post at all or flag and delete as they happen. Perhaps we should have chosen a different package to build our forum on but at the time this decision was made, I'm sure they chose the one that seemed the best option.

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Jared Burns

FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER (4.5k●2●9) Mar 05 '14, 8:14 p.m.

Does the forum software give us any control over hyperlinks created in the posts? That's really what the spammers are after.

Are any of these things feasible?

Provide a content filter which removes all hyperlinks except to a small whitelist. We can probably live with a small list to things like ibm.com, jazz.net, stackoverflow, jsfiddle, etc.
Require a certain threshold of points in order to create hyperlinks?
Automatically flag all posts with hyperlinks as spam so moderators have to review them? (I guess this would basically be a subset of "active moderation"...)

0 votes

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Millard Ellingsworth

FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER Mar 05 '14, 8:33 p.m.

We're working on a variety of angles and I think any of those suggestions could be implemented. I suspect the whitelist would be longer and would require ongoing maintenance. #2 is interesting because I expect most questions could be asked successfully without any links -- especially questions from newer users.

I could also see a combo: short whitelist for IBM properties (that wouldn't need much maintenance) and if you put any links in your post that are not on that list and your reputation is less than 100, we refuse your post with a polite message.

We have a growing list of Plan B options if our efforts on Plan A fail...

sam detweiler

Mar 05 '14, 8:46 p.m.

nice to see some options.. what is the timeframe for Plan A and B? days, weeks, months?

we've been talking about this for months now.

slam the door.. the whitelist Jared suggested is a great start.

politely refuse positing but link to an open topic where one could get info on suggesting further urls. (without posting them to the forum of course)

I don't apologize for pushing on this. But this site this is an incredibly powerful tool.

I apologize to Ralph et al.. I have a day job too.. supporting millions of dollars of company value, talent and expense trying to leverage IBM (Rational) products..

Francesco Chiossi

Mar 06 '14, 2:37 a.m.

One concern about links in questions is that several valid error messages or log extracts contains URLs in the format https://clmserver:9443/... that will be prevented to appear,

1 vote

sam detweiler

May 20 '14, 8:12 p.m.

We need more attention on this issue again. The forum has been overrun lately

1 vote

Ralph Schoon

FORUM ADMINISTRATOR / FORUM MODERATOR / JAZZ DEVELOPER May 21 '14, 2:20 a.m.

Doing what I can. Please don't delete the titles. Just add spam in front if you absolutely need to. Leave the content as it is,so we can get it into our recognition algorithm.

Tag it spam
Report it
Submit spam to akismet
A moderator will ban and delete

Thanks

sam detweiler

May 21 '14, 7:16 a.m.

the titles are garbage. cut/paste from other good posts.. or just random words.

showing 5 of 6 show 1 more comments

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Francesco Chiossi

(5.7k●1●11●19) May 21 '14, 3:59 a.m.

Are edited messages scanned as well?
I've noticed some spam messages first submitted with just some meaningless sentences and then edited to add links.

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Question asked: Mar 05 '14, 7:37 a.m.

Question was seen: 5,985 times

Last updated: May 21 '14, 7:18 a.m.

Can we PLEASE go to forum moderation? the allowance of spam is disrepectful to all of us users.

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