Forum Spam

[{LAW} Gamer_2k4]

To the admins here, how big of a problem is spam? I have a small forum myself, and the one thing that saves it (mostly) from bots is the requirement to have at least one post before a member can post URLs.  Somehow bots are getting past the captcha dealies.  Also, there's a good deal of people (probably bots as well) who join and don't post or contribute in any way.  I delete these after five days.

Do you have a big problem with fake accounts? Do you just let them sit, and do a mass delete of the inactive members every so often? Do you even get bots and inactive members?

[bja888]

Just because I am interested.
Can an admin run a query on the members database. How many users have 0 posts and a website in their profile?

[Clawbug]

I assume you run phpBB... right?

[chrisgbk]

To the admins here, how big of a problem is spam? I have a small forum myself, and the one thing that saves it (mostly) from bots is the requirement to have at least one post before a member can post URLs. Somehow bots are getting past the captcha dealies. Also, there's a good deal of people (probably bots as well) who join and don't post or contribute in any way. I delete these after five days.

Do you have a big problem with fake accounts? Do you just let them sit, and do a mass delete of the inactive members every so often? Do you even get bots and inactive members?

Bot generated spam is nearly non-existant; the only time there ever was spam from bots was when FLAB accidently changed the forums settings when he broke stuff a while back. That was sorted out once he fixed it; he keeps stats on just how many bots are blocked, hopefully he'll pop in and share them. Otherwise, bots are completely unable to register (thus far, at any rate). The only problems with spam are from the members.

Just because I am interested.
Can an admin run a query on the members database. How many users have 0 posts and a website in their profile?

While it won't give you any profile information unless you click each one: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?action=mlist;sort=posts;start=0;desc

By my count there are 5333 members with 0 posts, out of 9635, or ~55.4%. As to how many have only websites in their profile, no idea, but I wouldn't think it would be too many.

Kinda depressing actually, 55% of the forum has never posted, ever.

[Kagesha]

Just because I am interested.
Can an admin run a query on the members database. How many users have 0 posts and a website in their profile?

While it won't give you any profile information unless you click each one: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?action=mlist;sort=posts;start=0;desc

By my count there are 5333 members with 0 posts, out of 9635, or ~55.4%. As to how many have only websites in their profile, no idea, but I wouldn't think it would be too many.

Kinda depressing actually, 55% of the forum has never posted, ever.

There are columns so just look at the ones that have a icon in the website column and click on the icon it will send you straight to there site..

[FliesLikeABrick]

To the admins here, how big of a problem is spam? I have a small forum myself, and the one thing that saves it (mostly) from bots is the requirement to have at least one post before a member can post URLs.  Somehow bots are getting past the captcha dealies.  Also, there's a good deal of people (probably bots as well) who join and don't post or contribute in any way.  I delete these after five days.

Do you have a big problem with fake accounts? Do you just let them sit, and do a mass delete of the inactive members every so often? Do you even get bots and inactive members?

I made some custom modifications to the registration form to keep bots from auto-registering.  I don't think we've had a single bot post on these forums in over a year

Attached is a PDF and ODS (opendocument spreadsheet, openoffice and other programs can open it.  I think MS Office might be able to with a patch now) of some data about spambot attempts on the forums registration page and on the u13.net shoutbox. 

Total there are 37000+ entries over the past 14 months or so.  Each entry has the date, the offending IP, and the location (u13.net shoutbox or soldatforums registration).

If anyone wants to do anything with this data, I can provide it in other formats (SQL, CSV, etc)

edit: you can also open ODS/ODF and other open formats using MS Office with Sun's plugin: http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/index.jsp