Better forum

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Wednesday, 5 December 2012 at 22:40:39 UTC, js.mdnq wrote:
> Hehe, it's cause no one uses it! if you check out most groups 
> they are full of spam ;/ Only good spam filters can control it 
> to any degree. With a BB, you require people to register which 
> will stop 95% of spam. The other 5% could be fixed by asking 
> more complex questions, stop posting of suspected spammers.

Web bulletin boards, especially those using off-the-shelf 
software and common anti-spam plugins, are very attractive to 
spammers.

> Do not allow new users to post more than 1 post an hour. Allow 
> certain people(not necessarily moderators) to kill spammers. 
> Block IP's from registering more than once a month or so, etc...

All of these are draconian restrictions that WILL get into honest 
people's way.

> There are many potential ways to reduce spam to near zero. Most 
> BB's I've used have near zero spam without any complex spam 
> protection mechanisms(as far as I know).

A certain popular forum I'm a moderator of sees almost zero 
publicly-visible spam.

Why?

Because each user's first 5 posts must be manually approved by a 
moderator before they are publicly visible.

This is a gruesome, tiring, repetitive task that no one wants to 
do every day.

Even worse, the software (a popular commercial forum package) 
doesn't even show these posts to the user who posted them. This 
creates more confusion and duplicate posts.

Anti-spam plugins are not a panacea. All of them have false 
positives, and - worse - false negatives. Furthermore, like any 
plugins/modifications, they complicate software maintenance and 
may break on software upgrades, thus possibly locking you into a 
potentially-vulnerable old version of the software.

> IMO, the only downside is supporting legacy users who refuse to 
> make the transition. I think they are just being hard headed 
> though...

I think that's a rather close-minded viewpoint.