Thank you to whomever is cleaning out all the so far never ending spam

[Calm]

It feels like a job for Sisyphus, but may it eventually end (is there a smilie for crossing fingers?)🤞(there is!)

850+ pages in social.  It would be as bad probably in here too without the banning of spammers (so they have to restart and get those 25 posts again, which are all new threads when it  comes to spammers).

Hopefully there are options that can be toggled by the admin that will make this unlikely to happen in the future to save moderators from all this work.

Perhaps even finding a person to only act as a moderator to approve all new posters with the requirement they show they are human by interacting with the moderator, answering a question, etc, though this may lead to even fewer actual new posters.  Or maybe just give a moderator the ability to toggle the ‘need to be approve’ switch on and off if this will eventually stop if thespammers are no longer given access.  If it just pops up again when no approval needed is restored, that will be a pain.

I love the one post a day for new posters idea, though that might still result in Social being flooded.

Edited June 16, 2025 by Calm

[Tony uk]

I agree Calm. The type of  posting that has been happening the last few days, gets in the way of genuine posting. 

And a good job done with the clearing up.

[InCognitus]

I also hope they can recover some threads that appear to be completely missing now (or at least one that I know of).

[MiserereNobis]

I kept hoping Paul Simon would show up and post 50 ways to leave your lover. 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, InCognitus said:

I also hope they can recover some threads that appear to be completely missing now (or at least one that I know of).

Were they pinned?  I am not seeing the FAIR conference one.  No big deal as just an alert.

Guidelines appears to be missing, but if unpinned it may be too far back to be searched by the board’s searcher.  May try to google it. Added:  Google found it, but board says the link is missing.

I can see something being easily deleted if there were little boxes to be checked on the main topic page rather than having to go into each thread to delete it.  Accidentally checking a few real threads while checking the hundreds of spam threads would definitely have occurred if I was doing it.

Edited June 15, 2025 by Calm

[InCognitus]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Were they pinned?  I am not seeing the FAIR conference one.  No big deal as just an alert.

Guidelines appears to be missing, but if unpinned it may be too far back to be searched by the board’s searcher.  May try to google it. Added:  Google found it, but board says the link is missing.

I can see something being easily deleted if there were little boxes to be checked on the main topic page rather than having to go into each thread to delete it.  Accidentally checking a few real threads while checking the hundreds of spam threads would definitely have occurred if I was doing it.

It is the "Ephraim, the birthright, and the gathering" thread that I don't see (this should link to it but it's missing).  My last post in that thread was on May 26 and it exceeded 51 pages in a Word doc (so maybe the system couldn't handle that?).  lol

ETA:  Does anyone know how to contact a moderator?  I realize they have their hands full at the moment, but I want to see if that thread can be recovered.

Edited June 15, 2025 by InCognitus

[Calm]

47 minutes ago, InCognitus said:

It is the "Ephraim, the birthright, and the gathering" thread that I don't see (this should link to it but it's missing).  My last post in that thread was on May 26 and it exceeded 51 pages in a Word doc (so maybe the system couldn't handle that?).  lol

ETA:  Does anyone know how to contact a moderator?  I realize they have their hands full at the moment, but I want to see if that thread can be recovered.

I use the report function with an apology for the misuse.  They haven’t blocked me yet, but I wouldn’t make a habit of it.

That was different than the FAIR conference thread, so hopefully it can reappear.

Quote

it exceeded 51 pages in a Word doc 

I am impressed 

Edited June 15, 2025 by Calm

[InCognitus]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I use the report function with an apology for the misuse.  They haven’t blocked me yet, but I wouldn’t make a habit of it.

That was different than the FAIR conference thread, so hopefully it can reappear.

I am impressed 

Thank you for the advice.

As for the size of the last post, I was shocked when I realized how many pages it occupied. 

[Tacenda]

On 6/15/2025 at 12:45 PM, Calm said:

It feels like a job for Sisyphus, but may it eventually end (is there a smilie for crossing fingers?)🤞(there is!)

850+ pages in social.  It would be as bad probably in here too without the banning of spammers (so they have to restart and get those 25 posts again, which are all new threads when it  comes to spammers).

Hopefully there are options that can be toggled by the admin that will make this unlikely to happen in the future to save moderators from all this work.

Perhaps even finding a person to only act as a moderator to approve all new posters with the requirement they show they are human by interacting with the moderator, answering a question, etc, though this may lead to even fewer actual new posters.  Or maybe just give a moderator the ability to toggle the ‘need to be approve’ switch on and off if this will eventually stop if thespammers are no longer given access.  If it just pops up again when no approval needed is restored, that will be a pain.

I love the one post a day for new posters idea, though that might still result in Social being flooded.

Good thought, hope something happens, we need to show this nit wit the door!

[Skylla]

On 6/15/2025 at 2:23 PM, InCognitus said:

It is the "Ephraim, the birthright, and the gathering" thread that I don't see (this should link to it but it's missing).  My last post in that thread was on May 26 and it exceeded 51 pages in a Word doc (so maybe the system couldn't handle that?).  lol

ETA:  Does anyone know how to contact a moderator?  I realize they have their hands full at the moment, but I want to see if that thread can be recovered.

I'm trying to figure out how to restore the deleted thread. I apologize for everything that was accidentally deleted. I just spent several hours deleting thousands of threads. 

Skylla

[Pyreaux]

1 hour ago, Skylla said:

I'm trying to figure out how to restore the deleted thread. I apologize for everything that was accidentally deleted. I just spent several hours deleting thousands of threads. 

Skylla

Cool beans. No one joined since Sunday. Did you simply turn off all new joining or is it on?

[Skylla]

1 minute ago, Pyreaux said:

Cool beans. No one joined since Sunday. Did you simply turn off all new joining or is it on?

Nemesis turned off registration for now. 

[InCognitus]

1 hour ago, Skylla said:

I'm trying to figure out how to restore the deleted thread. I apologize for everything that was accidentally deleted. I just spent several hours deleting thousands of threads. 

Skylla

Thank you!  I realize this must be a huge headache with everything else that's going on.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Skylla said:

I'm trying to figure out how to restore the deleted thread. I apologize for everything that was accidentally deleted. I just spent several hours deleting thousands of threads. 

Skylla

I felt like standing up and applauding when I saw the thread count in Social drop below 200 pages again, seeing you probably had to delete over a thousand pages of threads.

Edited June 19, 2025 by Calm

[Tacenda]

4 hours ago, Skylla said:

I'm trying to figure out how to restore the deleted thread. I apologize for everything that was accidentally deleted. I just spent several hours deleting thousands of threads. 

Skylla

Love ya Skylla, and the other mods!

[InCognitus]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

I felt like standing up and applauding when I saw the thread count in Social drop below 200 pages again, seeing you probably had to delete over a thousand pages of threads.

I had hoped there would be a way to delete the users and the posts created by those users along with them, which might also delete all the created threads.  But apparently that's not the case.

I can see how easy it would be to accidently delete a thread given all the activity. 

[Rain]

6 hours ago, Skylla said:

Nemesis turned off registration for now. 

We appreciate all your work.  It can't be easy and is a service for us.

[Rain]

Hmm. That's interesting.  The newest posts as of a few minutes ago were made by a new "member" spammer a week ago on the 13th. I would have thought that they would start posting right away. I'm curious why there is space between registration and posting.

Have all of them been this way? That looks to be the only one left in my brief look.

[Calm]

Poor Skylla thinking it was over with.  Sleeper spam. How odd.

[InCognitus]

8 minutes ago, Calm said:

Poor Skylla thinking it was over with.  Sleeper spam. How odd.

Isn't Jennifer Nelson President Nelson's granddaughter?  I'm not sure why she's obsessing about Delta Airlines. 

(I really shouldn't joke about such things, next thing I know it will be bouncing around the internet).

[Skylla]

1 hour ago, InCognitus said:

Isn't Jennifer Nelson President Nelson's granddaughter?  I'm not sure why she's obsessing about Delta Airlines. 

(I really shouldn't joke about such things, next thing I know it will be bouncing around the internet).

Bye, Jennifer. 

[Skylla]

On 6/19/2025 at 8:35 PM, Rain said:

We appreciate all your work.  It can't be easy and is a service for us.

Thank you! 

[Calm]

There are listed 146 new members who signed up in the last week.  In the last month, over 500.  But in the last 6 months only 650ish iirc . I have never tracked members registering before so I am assuming the previous 5 months (around 70 in total or 15 per month on average) is typical these days.  So I wonder if the spammer has been setting up for the last month.  I guess it’s just writing a program and letting the bots do the work, but got to wonder how this setup accomplishes anything except to lead people to seriously consider just staying at home for vacation (the implication being if one needs all that information when planning travel, it must be just one big pain in the whatever to do).

If so, could take awhile for the sleeper spammers among them to all activate.

It’s not like Skylla has anything else to do though, right.   

Edited June 21, 2025 by Calm

[Tony uk]

I think it may already have suggested by another member. Any new member to the board, is expected to post on the board, potentially has part of setting up there profile. It could just be a brief introduction, who they are, why the have chosen to be on this specific board.

[Stargazer]

I have been a member of other boards where new registrations had to be vetted by a mod before they could start posting. This usually involved the registrant having to answer some questions that required knowing what the board was for. Back in the day when I myself ran a fan board for a particular science fiction series that has since ended, we got attacked by spam bots and I almost gave up in despair trying to beat them off. Once I set up a vetting procedure that included requiring the registrant to correctly answer a couple of questions, the spamming stopped.