Spammers...

[Andem]

Hey everyone...

Since these forums are slowly growing, I seem to be coming on every now and then and noticing spam. Since :spam: has never really been a big problem on these boards, Admins usually just edit the thread and cut out the url to show it's not allowed here and it's controlled. Posting nice announcements like:

Hi everybody,

I just started a cool web site for Canadians. It's mainly for mobile phones, but there's some other neat features you might want to check out. The url is http://www.mydomain.ca and you're welcome to check it out. Let me know how you like it.

Lately, though, people have been posting weird threads that just say things like "Visit this web site for nutrition supplements!".

Do you think we should limit web site advertising to the announcement thread only AND limit it to personal/non-commercial sites only? Ofcourse there are a lot of good commercial sites, but I usually see those spammed on forums as the kind of stuff you DONT want everyday in your mailbox, that you end up deleting.

Another one we get every now and then that is always being dealt with is users signing up with nicknames like ' - aala - '. They show up at the top of the memberlist so search engines think their sites are popular because their porn URLs or other urls are included in the memberlist as a link on "web site".


What do you think the policy of spam should be? Just delete it? Edit it? Completely limit it to non-commercial sites in Announcements?

 

[Shmad]

I think in Chit-Chat there should be a thread like 'website promotion' or something where people can post their personal or non-commercial sites granted they go hand in hand with this sites pretty much PG (at most times) ratings and follow the conduct set forth in the AUP.

Then again, just my opinion.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

Yes, I thought quite like Shmad. There should be a non-stickied thread in Chit-Chat where people can post links to acceptable sites. People wouldn't have to view it, and it wouldn't take up a whole thread for each link. Seems ok to me.

 

[JDream]

Agree with Shmad and GA.

 

[Cyberm4n]

i think you should just cut out the spam completely. forget about the thread for useful websites and just add a link to the thread that it's relevant to. so if we're talking about mobile phones from telus, you can add a link to the thread "yeah yeah, this sites good info about telus phones like sony ericsson, here's the url. it shows the pros and cons of each of them". get the idea?

 

[JDream]

hmmm