Could We Pin All of the "Non-Spam" ... ?

[Kenngo1969]

Could all of the "non-spam," "actually-related-to-the-Board's-purpose" topics be pinned, so they're the Board's top results and we don't have to wade through thousands of pounds of Spam(tm) to find them?

Just curious.

Thanks.

[teddyaware]

42 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Could all of the "non-spam," "actually-related-to-the-Board's-purpose" topics be pinned, so they're the Board's top results and we don't have to wade through thousands of pounds of Spam(tm) to find them?

Just curious.

Thanks.

You’d think that with today’s I.T. technology and an active human brain performing some oversight that this intrusive electronic invasion wouldn’t even be an issue. Do the administrators have this site on autopilot?

[Calm]

2 hours ago, teddyaware said:

You’d think that with today’s I.T. technology and an active human brain performing some oversight that this intrusive electronic invasion wouldn’t even be an issue. Do the administrators have this site on autopilot?

There is one administrator (Nemesis) and he is apparently unavailable at the moment, at least for the time needed to upgrade the site for additional security.   My guess (based on info over 20 years old) is he will need to decide how much of an upgrade he needs and then get out the pocketbook.  May take a bit to go through the options.  The moderator(s?) who is kind enough to trim the spam wouldn’t have the ability to change settings.  This assumes Nemesis is using some sort of template.  If not, it’s likely more complicated.

I get why Nemesis has felt it reasonable to not attend the site on a daily basis and even leave it for a week or more on occasion as this board is remarkably well behaved imo and only really needs a moderator nowadays.  We haven’t had a major ‘crisis’ that required the board being shutdown or whatever for a long, long time.  Even spam at worst has been limited to a dozen threads or less iirc, which would take just a few minutes to delete.

Edited June 17, 2025 by Calm

[Calm]

Just a FYI…

For those wanting to continue conversations without have to search for threads either by eye, google, or board search (ugh), use the notification option to track threads (the bell in the right hand corner).  If you “follow” threads (there is a follow topic button on the bottom left of the last post or post reply box), it should notify you if someone posts a response in it.  You may have to go into your account to change notifications settings if you have turned them all off.  

I just use the rep points to track my conversations as someone is always nice enough to give me a rep sometime in a thread.  Even if it’s not a new rep point, I can scan through the old ones to find the link.  It won’t take me to the last unread post, but that’s easy to find once I am in the thread.

Edited June 17, 2025 by Calm

[Pyreaux]

The easy thing he could do is cap the number of Topics per day in Social Hall. That should slow and contain it somewhat until he finds a more permanent solution.

Then roll the forum back to 3 days, if there are saved snapshots. Deleting 3 days of new posts and users, not banning all the new users, so not blocking innocent newbies from just rejoining. We might lose posts but it might save him the work of deleting them all.

The other thing is use Captcha for new users. I don't know if that costs anything.

Edited June 17, 2025 by Pyreaux

[Calm]

 Maybe someone else can confirm this as I didn’t open the thread to see what was said, but the first night the spammers attacked, I noticed a new post in the pinned guidelines thread.  Someone could have been trying to bring attention to the spam or it could have been spam, maybe lots of it.  The latter is the only reason I can think of for the pinned threads to be missing.  

Seeing the spam triggered my “I am not supposed to be on my tech anyway” response, so I can’t remember if any other pinned threads had new posts, but if the pinned threads did get flooded that night it would explain why they disappeared and are completely gone, not just not accessible (my guess is you have to delete posts one by one while threads can be massed deleted on the topic page and there was no need to save the FAIR thread, it can just be redone with updated info once the Horde attack is over; the Guideline thread…Guidelines needed to be updated iirc, there are a few currently unwritten rules that can get you banned that need to be included, so not a bad idea to start fresh).

I can only remember the FAIR conference thread as pinned, but maybe it wasn’t?  It is gone now anyway.  At least I am not finding it in my topics list (both “fair” and “conference” bring up a ton of threads, so I used my profile to see if I could track it down.  I used Google for the Board Guidelines:

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/66539-board-guidelines-update-please-review-before-posting/
 

Can’t remember if anything else was pinned.

All that to say pinning might not be a way to avoid posts getting lost and may make things worse.

Otoh, they aren’t being flooded in In the News or Social Hall, so my logic now I registered that last fact is really flawed, lol

Edited June 17, 2025 by Calm

[Tacenda]

Oh what a relief, the board looks normal again.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

Oh what a relief, the board looks normal again.

It’s not there yet though I am afraid. A moderator likely came in and blocked all spammers so far and then cleaned out here. But new ones are appearing in Social and once they hit 25, we will again have them in here. It looks like there is some time between posting the spam so it will be a few hours I am guessing till we see them. Maybe more if the lovely moderator pops in again. 
 

It’s quite sufficient to give me my little serotonin hit I get when I visit the board though, lol

Even just a few posts a day keep me from withdrawal

Edited June 17, 2025 by Calm

[The Nehor]

Also just capping all users on how many threads a day they can start would make this more difficult for the bots. Does anyone start more than one or two threads a day here?

[Calm]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Also just capping all users on how many threads a day they can start would make this more difficult for the bots. Does anyone start more than one or two threads a day here?

On rare occasions I do, but it would hardly be a hardship to spread them out.  I apparently managed to go for a year or so without creating a topic if my profile is accurate.

[Tony uk]

I am not that tech aware. On some internet sites, at the start there is a picture, which is separated in to a grid system. The person will be asked to identify something such as a bike or a bus, and mark the appropriate boxes within the picture/grid.

[webbles]

4 minutes ago, Tony uk said:

I am not that tech aware. On some internet sites, at the start there is a picture, which is separated in to a grid system. The person will be asked to identify something such as a bike or a bus, and mark the appropriate boxes within the picture/grid.

That's called a captcha.  Stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing Test".  Many captchas are actually easy for computers to solve.  Usually, the captchas also do other work to figure out of you are a human.  Like how fast you solve it, the order you solve it, how the mouse moves and the typing speed, or if you've solved a captcha somewhere else and still look human.  So you don't even need to see a picture for the captcha for it to make a determination.

[Tony uk]

10 minutes ago, webbles said:

That's called a captcha.  Stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing Test".  Many captchas are actually easy for computers to solve.  Usually, the captchas also do other work to figure out of you are a human.  Like how fast you solve it, the order you solve it, how the mouse moves and the typing speed, or if you've solved a captcha somewhere else and still look human.  So you don't even need to see a picture for the captcha for it to make a determination.

Thanks for the reply webbles. As I mentioned, I am not that tech aware. At least I have gained a bit more understanding of the matter 👍.

[Stargazer]

I'm wondering if this isn't mere spam, but an actual attack on the board, for being LDS-oriented? No evidence of this, however, so it's just my wild speculation.

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, Stargazer said:

I'm wondering if this isn't mere spam, but an actual attack on the board, for being LDS-oriented? No evidence of this, however, so it's just my wild speculation.

Possible, but I would expect a more targeted message if this was deliberate. This looks like bots just doing their thing.

[Stargazer]

12 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Possible, but I would expect a more targeted message if this was deliberate. This looks like bots just doing their thing.

I thought of that, too. And I think it's most likely you're right about it being bots.

 

[Rain]

This should break the sometimes rumor that calm is a mod.

[Calm]

4 hours ago, Rain said:

This should break the sometimes rumor that calm is a mod.

Lol, I actually thought of volunteering to moderate one thing and only one thing and that is checking off on new posters who would have to write something that made sense and was relevant to the board as part of signing up if that is the way Nemesis wants to fix things (since I can’t remember a day in the last 20 years I haven’t visited the board I am probably a good choice for gatekeeper)

[Calm]

It has only been since the 13th (Pyreaux’s post about spam was posted on the 12th and it was the next day iirc).  Seems longer, like two weeks, lol.  Guess that is my board addiction altering my time sense.

Edited June 19, 2025 by Calm

[Rain]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

It has only been since the 13th (Pyreaux’s post about spam was posted on the 12th and it was the next day iirc).  Seems longer, like two weeks, lol.  Guess that is my board addiction altering my time sense.

If I remember, there were a couple of spam posts before then. I figured his post was in reference to them

[Calm]

23 minutes ago, Rain said:

If I remember, there were a couple of spam posts before then. I figured his post was in reference to them

I don’t trust my memory and they might have been deleted anyway before I woke up, lol.  That would make sense as I was wondering why Pyreaux had posted that out of the blue since it had been a few days iirc since we were spammed.

[Kenngo1969]

Buuuut, aaaaanywaaaaaay ... as long as we're on the [non-] subject, does anybody know how to contact Delta Airlines to change my reservation?  

[Stargazer]

On 6/19/2025 at 7:24 PM, Calm said:

Lol, I actually thought of volunteering to moderate one thing and only one thing and that is checking off on new posters who would have to write something that made sense and was relevant to the board as part of signing up if that is the way Nemesis wants to fix things (since I can’t remember a day in the last 20 years I haven’t visited the board I am probably a good choice for gatekeeper)

I hereby nominate Calm as Associate Mod! Do I hear a second?

[Tony uk]

46 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

I hereby nominate Calm as Associate Mod! Do I hear a second?

I would certainly second that.

[Calm]

Nemesis would have to be desperate to make me a mod based on my previous behaviour (on ZLMB) and how I can’t stop myself from stepping in here to ‘help’ even as not a mod.  I was way too earnest and wanting to fulfill expectations of everyone and ending up asking for direction way too much.  I may have learned to relax more after 20 years and just do exactly what I committed to and no more, but I really don’t know if I would end up making more work for him or less.