Today I got home and there were 2 pages of bot posts. Ben, is there any way you can donate me the ability to ban IP addresses? Because at the moment I can view other users under the same IP and ban them all individually, but it would be ruthlessly efficient if I could ban whole IP addresses at the click of a button. Multiple bots destroyed simultaneously. Edit: Just for now though, could you ban IP 192.74.238.60 please? It keeps making new accounts with names beginning with A and posting things. Double edit: Another repeat offender, 5.149.212.198
My 2 cents, for what its worth: Another idea could be to sticky the top five or ten threads, as it seems the bots don't post in existing threads so much. In doing so, any spam threads would end up down the page.
That works pretty well short term but it means actual new posts are likely to get buried pretty quickly if we ignore everything that isn't stickied. I have an idea. They only post in General Discussion, never in Shows, so we make a new decoy forum called General Discussion with a stickied message for new members, and another forum called something entirely different where the actual discussion takes place.
You're right about them only posting in General Discussion, but does anyone experienced in forums and spambots know exactly why this is? My guess would be that either they detect that General Discussion has many more threads and views, or it could be that it is first on the list and therefore the default for bots to post in, though that is just guess. Maybe knowing more about our robot enemies will mean we can be better at fighting them?
I think the best (and the simplest and most user-friendly) thing would be to have the moderators approve all General Discussion posts (except by "Members" or "Active Members", if that's possible in XenForo). We don't have a great rate of new posts (as far as I've noticed), so it shouldn't be too much of a barrier to discussion.
I think it would be best to approve all new threads but not posts, seeing as they don't post in existing threads. On a related note, who the hell makes these bots? Don't they realise their adverts just get deleted? Don't they know we can't speak russian?
Yeah, that's what I meant. I'm getting confused with Reddit terminology. They must work to some extent!
Ok. Just got back in town. And the bots had gone nuts. I closed registration again until I can figure something better out. Will look into it more soon. But for now, sleep.
