News Source: 1
Published: Feb 27, 2008 - 09:11 am
Story Found By: MattMcGee 1913 Days ago
Category: Sphinn Zone
It’s no secret that we’re being bombarded with spam, especially over the past week. Several of you have commented on it here on the site, and others are approaching me about it here at SMX West. I’m hopeful we’ll talk about the spam issue internally when things settle down after the conference.
IN THE MEANTIME, would you please help police the site while we’re here in Santa Clara and unable to watch Sphinn as closely as we do normally?
Of the 16 accounts I killed tonight, probably half were spam posts that were submitted here 4-5 hours ago (or more). Yet, they were only tagged as spam by 0-1 other users. Meanwhile, a couple dozen people had submitted their own material and/or posted comments elsewhere on the site. So, our regular users are using the site, but ignoring the spam in "What’s New."
Please use the tools available to you to help police the site, esp. this week. If you see something that’s spam, push the SPAM link/button. When 5 of you do that, the post will go away automatically, and the site will be more enjoyable for all.
Thanks for reading....
Matt
20 Comments
Comments
I didn’t know the threshold was that high, I was reporting stuff last night and tonight and wondering why nothing was happening, now I guess I understand it.
John - thanks for doing that. I hope others join you. :)
There’s definitely been plenty of it lately. I always do a quick spam-scan when I open What’s New and tag all the obvious stuff. Maybe a slightly lower threshold - say 3 might be worth trying?
"If you see something that’s spam, push the SPAM link/button. When 5 of you do that, the post will go away automatically"So I guess registering 4 extra accounts will work as well? :PNo just kidding. Like always, I’ll be hitting that spam button whenever another car dealer or freaky dentist tries to submit irrelevant stuff. The What’s New page is probably the most important page on Sphinn, so it’s important to keep it clean...
What do you guys define as spam?Is this non internet/social/seo articles or would you class someone sphinning their own content spam as well?
sphinning own content is absolutely ok. you know spam when you see it. it’s usually got absolutely nothing with the search marketing or internet marketing topic. if you see some guy hawking his latest vitamin site or whatever, its spam.
Yep loads of spam in the what’s new section - just clicked on all of them. I think the level of 5 reports maybe a little high? Or maybe just accept 2 reports if they come from regular/trusted users (the top 50 sphinners or so).
Here’s where a lot of it is coming from:http://socialposter.comIt has a submit to Sphinn button - and people are auto-submitting for the backlink.. followed or nofollowed.
@Sphinn admin team... if you happen to check your logs and see that Brett is correct, you might want to prevent that via referrer in the .htaccess or some such. Should be extremely easy to do.Or, if you want another extremely fast fix, add a quick hidden field to the submit form on the site now, and check for it’s existence on the receiving end. True, will be easy to crack... but less than 5 minutes to implement, and will instantly break every bot/auto-submitter geared towards Sphinn that exists as of today.
Perhaps have some mini-mods appointed? People who can click the spam button and have it at least submitted for review from a real mod? I click the spam button sometimes, but rarely see it have impact. Most of the time I have to use the spam report form if I want something killed.
boy, i see what you mean. the spam is getting to be quite a problem. i just saw a sphinn story with the f word in the title plus p@rn in the subject. how did that get through a filter?i’m on board and will start reporting more.i think one problem is folks are so used to skipping by stories with the default green avatar they don’t even see how bad they are getting. i know that is the habit i’ve gotten into.
We do have a moderator review system in place already for spam, although it currently requires 5 reports before getting a post removed from the site and placed into the review system. I’ll ask Michelle to lower this limit to 3 reports though and we’ll see if that helps.Although SocialPoster.com may encourage people to submit off-topic stories, it doesn’t actually bypass any of our safeguards. You still need to register for an account, complete the captchas and verify your email address before you can successfully post. As we block people on the first instance of spam, they therefore have to go through the registration process all over again. SP is basically just a bookmark tool for social sites.
I must have clicked on the "report spam" button at least 20 times in the last three days. Every other post was junk one day.Usually the spammers mostly come out to play at the weekend. This week they carried on right the way through Monday too.
"What do you guys define as spam?"Real simple; posts on heart disease, shoes, televisions, viagra... what Donna said. This is blatant spam. Desphinning should be used when you don’t agree with something (and have a good reason to remove your vote), but spam is spam and doesn’t belng here. Don’t be afraid to use the spam reporting tool.
@Tamar: Does that include blanant ebook/product/make money quick hyping with no content?
Yeah Shady. Good question. I would think that it would since it really adds no value.
Blatent promotion, and hype with no content? Sure that’s usually junk. It also includes most posts where the link URL points to the root of the site.
It also includes most posts where the link URL points to the root of the site.Or the About Us page, etc.@evilgreenmonkey... has anyone looked at the logs and analyzed the IP blocks, see if there are any recognizable patterns/Class C ownerships that you might want to ban?
Links to homepages and other "non-news" pages are already treated as spam and removed when we find them - if we miss any, please his the Report Spam button.With regards to ebook/product/make money stories, we remove stories that are blatantly self-promotional hype although leave border-line cases upto the user (remember to Desphinn whenever you don’t like something)Our admin system allows us to monitor IP addresses and other information of both terminated and active accounts - we already block IP addresses although most spammers use private proxies or dial-up.
I’m not on spin every minute, and did not notice this happening. Did it looks like automated request or some manual army? If it was some automated thing, maybe you can check for some updates on Pligg for any vurnerability updates.