They’re at it again - spam messages

That makes sense NotSpaghetti and is shat I do too.

What not shat !

Thank you, Kelly. They are gone now.

We keep having this discussion, should we say reported or not?

YES!

Does it matter if it makes the spam go to the top? No it doesn’t. At least we know it has been reported by someone, otherwise we all assume another poster has gone to the trouble of doing it and I won’t have to. Yippee!

Far more use than posting ‘bump’.

Parsley3

Thank you, Kelly. They are gone now.

Spoke too soon!

I suppose if we report then at least GNHQ will know and we can bump other threads up the list.

Germanshepherdsmum

Why can’t GN be more proactive? These spam posts are instantly recognisable

Cost I presume. In one way or another.

Post "reported" or not? It depends what your purpose is in reporting it. My purpose is to get rid of the damn things as fast as possible and not give them the least bit of encouragement.

That means removing them from being visible and being able to be seen, read, and interacted with in any way possible. If the people or bots sending them are good at their nefarious job, they will also be monitoring the threads they start for reactions, maybe counting the number of replies they get.

I also want to keep the lists of posts in the last hour as short as I can, so it is best to encourage spam to move down it. I choose the threads I read from that list, and when there are fifty or so new threads per hour being spammed onto that, I have to scroll down past the latest ones.

Posters who don't know to keep off them then see them and think they are new, open them and see that others are reporting them, and add their own comment - thus keeping them appearing and cluttering up the list.

If the older ones are still getting new posts because someone has added another to tell us that they too have reported it, then those spam threads keep reappearing above the newer ones.

I don't think the moderator on duty is just sitting there reading every post that appears on every thread on every topic. For a start, there are a LOT of posts on a LOT of different topics, and the posts keep on coming, so while they were reading one thread, a dozen others could be filling up with new posts that they haven't seen. Try timing yourself to just read every post without even stoppping to take any actions, and see how long it takes.

A couple of days ago, I was sitting at home with nothing else to do, so I reported over 50 spam posts - more were arriving as fast as I reported them, and some appeared more than once because they had had another post added to them!! It would take a moderator the same length of time to do whatever they do with each. This is now not something that can be done manually, the spammers are automated, so to defend against them, the websites have to adapt to match. That means employing programmers to alter the files that deal with posts behind the pages, which can't happen overnight and isn't cheap.

They don’t have to read every post on every thread. These latest spam posts are instantly recognisable.

Germanshepherdsmum

They don’t have to read every post on every thread. These latest spam posts are instantly recognisable.

Not all spam posts are.

They still have to see them, which means having their eyes fixed on a view of all threads on all topics at all times, including all at 1 am. An automatic check/isolation for potential viruses, spam and scams wouldn't take time off for weekends and sleep.

Each time there are a rash of them they’re always the same userid, so I just hit the report button on one, admin then know to check. Between them and the big red square its a a PINA.

Here we go again and again …

Is there a way we can have a ‘block poster’ button as they do on many other sites?

I counted 16 of the same, slightly different, spam posts on the active thread earlier this morning. 16????
I agree to having a block poster button…. Unfortunately, it might get misused if opinions diverge.

My rough count on Last Day is currently 49.

I reported one of several yesterday afternoon and by the time I had done that they were gone so admin are certainly doing something about it.

grandMattie

I counted 16 of the same, slightly different, spam posts on the active thread earlier this morning. 16????
I agree to having a block poster button…. Unfortunately, it might get misused if opinions diverge.

Yes- you are right, hadn’t thought of that.

Admin removed this morning's early crop very quickly. Thank you!

Today they are of a different sort!

Not spaghetti I wasn't sure if it was spam or someone a bit unwell or obsessed! Completely irrelevant to the posts it appears on though.

Yes, and given that they were everywhere...

Embalming powder anyone?

Be fair, Parsley3. How do you expect to do some everyday embalming without the appropriate powder?