forums.ps2dev.org

I've been noticing recently that a number of the new users in the forums seem to becoming members for the sole purpose of adding a weblink to some crappy web site.

If you check the member list you will see a number of members have links to online pharmacies, etc with no posts to the forums. Is there anything we can do to stop this other than delete the users? Anyone know if this is being done using some script.. or manually added?

Could forum ops be on the lookout for this behavious and purge users of this type as quickly as possible.

Thanks,
Oobles.

I'd suggest a simple SQL request that can erase from the database all the registred users who's post number equals zero. But we don't have direct SQL access, and erasing manually should be a pain in the ass. Ho, and I believe this might be a script. Seeing how blogs can sometime gets spammed, and other kind of stuff, those can only be scripts.

My, my, my... spamming becomes worse and worse...


On a side note, have you notice the referer spamming ? those morons who just spams your apache logs with strange referers, just hoping you have an awstats running publically.

One way or another I think we need to figure out and agree on a policy on it before we start deleting users blindly..

Something like if you are here for X amount of time with zero posts and a link to a commercial website you will be deleted or what not.

I'd suggest only the "X amount of time and zero post". Easier to build up an automatic deletion script :P

Um, you're talking about web links in the member's list? People actually read the member's list? And even if they do, why is this a problem?

It is a google problem. It makes the pagerank of the spamer getting higher. And it makes ps2dev's forum a "referer" of those crappy stuff. Don't understimate google's nasty powers.

Then instruct Google to not scan the member's list. Simple.

Or blank out the url instead of deleting the account.

Possible ideas in increasing order of meanness:

0. Hide URL's in such a way that there is no incentive.
1. Delete URL's from people who have never ever posted, after X time.
2. Just don't offer URL's at all.
3. Delete accounts of people who have never ever posted, after X time.
(this one prob makes sense in the long run. accounts are only needed
for posting, and it might keep the user database clean, if it even matters)

Maybe hide URLs until X number of posts?

How to update robots.txt and META tags so Google won't index them:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/3.html#removed

Though this won't solve the problem (spammers creating accounts), it will deprive them of hits, and google won't find them through us. Sadly, it's unlikely that this will really do any good, since presumably the accounts were created by bots in the first place...

Doesn't phpbb have an image verifier ?, you know, the one that displays a few letters in a box or some picture and you have to say what it is ? that would at least stop bots creating accounts