Warning: Spammers are getting better
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To the regular readers,
Please be wary of up-voting “me too” posts.
We just had a case of someone making simple “me too” and thank-you posts, getting a positive reputation value, then immediately replying to something and changing the quoted links to spam sites.
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… and changing the quoted links to spam sites.
It’s amazing that people waste their time and everyone else’s with stuff like this.
(I hope it wasn’t me that upvoted a “me, too”)
Maybe a reputation of 5+ should be required for posting links.
Any legit person with <5 wanting to post links could complain and then the request analyzed in more detail to ensure they were actually, well, legit. -
I am not going to “out” the upvoter – it was a well-crafted upvote-honeypot post, not just a simple “me too” – the first time I read the post, it didn’t strike me as being “fake”.
Regarding a threshold of 5: I can give it a try.
Unfortunately, due to the slew of obvious spam posts after I posted this, by someone who had 0 reputation (and thus the linking failed, though it was obvious they were trying), we’ve got more problems than the ultra-smart spammers, which reputation limits won’t stop completely.
I’ve contacted Don to ask about some behind-the-scenes settings, to see if we can go back to spam being virtually non-existent, like it had been for the last few months since the software+settings upgrades.
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I think that a reputation limit of 5+ would likely be net negative, just by virtue of making life more difficult for legitimate posters, not to mention real human beings who feel pressured into upvoting posts just to get people over the reputation hump.
I think all it would do is cheapen reputation, and the most sophisticated spambots will probably be able to overcome any hurdles that wouldn’t also exclude a large fraction of real posters. I think back to all those new Captchas where you have to find the image that has a tiny little bit of bike in it, knowing full well that even those Captchas will be cracked in a few months anyway.
That said, I feel @PeterJones’ pain at having to be the main obstacle to this rising tide of spam.I know that the current system of requiring 1 reputation to post links has been working reasonably well, but requiring one person to upvote a post is a much smaller ask than requiring five distinct people to do so, especially on a low-traffic forum like this. I can think of many posts that I spent a long time working on where I received less than 5 upvotes. This is fine, I’m not complaining, but I think that the current incentives are good and should not be distorted by an overly restrictive rule. Let StackOverflow have all sorts of onerous gates for would-be contributors to pass through.
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@Mark-Olson said in Warning: Spammers are getting better:
especially on a low-traffic forum like this
I know lower that avoid spam by mostly being ignored because of the lack of traffic. :-)
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Personally, I don’t see posting links as being essential to new users posting here – it’s mostly useful for us “old timers” who want to direct someone to the user manual or the official downloads or issues pages.
But looking at the upvotes to the various posts in this topic, it appears to me that some people agreed with upping the threshold, but others didn’t want to make the barrier to posting links too onerous. As a result, I thought a compromise would be good: I have put the threshold at only needing 2 reputation: so it requires only one truly good post that’s able to convince at least 2 voters that it was quality, or two good posts that convince at least one upvote each; I think that’s a reachable threshold for a new poster to get after one or two good contributions, but it lessens the chance of a honeypot being successful at giving a new spammer the ability to post links.
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@PeterJones ,
Question. Does the limit on links, apply only tourl linksto webpage sites, or does that include things like theimage linkin the forum system?
My question stems from the option of allowing users to post their links to see their screenshots…etc, but not allow them to redirect people to links that may lead outside of the forum, or in actuality, bring the link into the browser that is currently viewing the forum. Is this a possible point of throttle?
If that is the case, then I actually see a good point of being able to keep people from posting links that leave the forum upping them to 5, rather than preventing them from posting screenshots into the forum.
I’m not sure if the forum mechanics allow that kind of granular control. -
With the forum updates a few months ago, all internal links (@-mentions, the URL to the replied-to message, pasted image links, links to other posts/topics/faqs) were excluded from the reputation limit, so even 0-reputation people can reply or paste an image into their first post.
image links to external sites (using imgur or the like) are restricted by the reputation limit, so it takes at least 2 reputation to link to an imgur picture.
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@PeterJones said in Warning: Spammers are getting better:
so even 0-reputation people can reply or paste an image into their first post.
image links to external sites (using imgur or the like) are restricted by the reputation limit, so it takes at least 2 reputation to link to an imgur picture.
Then, @PeterJones , I think it would be appropriate to allow someone with the external link capability to be further restrained until a reputation limit of at least 5 was accomplished. I see far too many 1 post questions from people that don’t even bother reading the manual or searching the forums to pre-screen for possible answers to their questions.
So unless they’ve at least established themselves with 5 rep points, which is not that hard to get here if they stay for ANY length of time, then the spammers will have to work even harder at least by a number of 3 above the level you suggest (2), to be screened as to their intentions.
As you point out, all the internal forum options for linking are available to them, and would not need more to get a question answered in that amount of time before they either show themselves (as spammers/bots), or they decide they don’t need to come back because they have their answer. At least, if they start spamming after 5 rep, the banning would be easier to justify beyond coincidence.
Just my $0.02 Point of view. :-)
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Please
If you think you’ve found a new topic that looks to be coming from an AI/spambot, just downvote and report, don’t reply. If you reply, and I or another moderator ends up deleting the original, it just leaves a reply hanging off a topic without an original post, which is pointless. If I find such replies, they will likely be deleted as well.
