Captchas are no obstacle for bots (or spam posters, which sometimes aren't even bots but humans). Captchas do only annoy/hinder "legit users". Captchas are essentially useless and will not be implemented ever, as far as I've read from previous posts of the Curse software developers.
I'm not sure where to post this... but I'll probably bump this every now and then:
Please do not post in any of those spam threads. Do not post any witty comments, do not post just to tell that you reported a bot (we can see it, no worries), and do not ask about spam-related questions in those threads but *here*.
Q: Why aren't those bots automatically detected?
A: Some of them are, but some of them are not. If the spam filter is a bit more aggressive you'd see completely legit threads disappear (we already have to un-mark threads, posts, signatures, and builds as "not spam" occasionally).
Q: Why should I not post in those threads?
A: It's a free bump for a spammer, which is success for them. Also, after the spam bot has been banned, we have to manually delete your post as well. Last but not least - I'm not sure about it, but just an observation - a thread with replies has a lower likelihood to be detected as spam thread.
I second that. My fingers are burning from banning so many bots... Shinna, Zero, Truecoldkill, and myself have (manually) banned several hundreds (!) bots this morning. You might notice that most threads disappear after a few minutes - the spam system just sometimes needs a minute or two to detect them. It's certainly a new high... there have been over 2500 (!) threads in the past few hours by those spam bots. I think the anti spam system is a bit overwhelmed.
We keep banning them, no worries, it's just popping up faster than we can ban it at times. In the meantime, I think there's no need to reporting them... if it's so obvious spam that appears on the "recent post" list I don't think reporting is necessary ;-)
It would be nice if it's only a small wave during a fixed time ;-)
There was a new wave of spam (different to the previous one), so the system had to "adapt" again. It started about 17 hours ago and has been going on constantly since then. What you saw was just the initial spam before the system new about it (after deleting a few of those threads it's now under control, hopefully).
There were close to 1000 threads of spam just in the past 17 hours... so what you saw was only a small part. Hopefully we won't be bothered by it a lot anytime soon, thanks to Molster and the rest of the DFans team.
The bots actually did post in existing threads, not just new ones. But those were captured by the spam system. So yeah, they would resort to that, too ;-)
And honestly... 10 posts to make a new thread is kind of counter-productive because most people start by asking a question in a new thread (I think that's what I did when I joined as well). It would definitely alienate some new users, but bots would just post (or wait and post, if you add a time-out) to hit the 10 post mark and then make the thread. We've had this rule before as you might remember.
Happy Holidays to you too :-) I think we're all guarding the hen house every now and then, but not as regularly as on a "normal day" of course.
Having a 10 post limit to make a new thread doesn't help a thing. Those bots spam 10 threads/post in no time.. plus, they would just bump other threads with their spam messages (and then make a new thread if the system doesn't recognize them until then). Also, we're banning all of them but they just sign up again and again with random user names. I completely agree with you that this is ridiculous and the current implemented system doesn't seem to be enough... but the "simple solutions" don't work either. After all, bots are smarter than average human posters these days - just imagine CAPTCHAS which can be solved with close to 100% success rate by bots but we humans fail it from time to time
As Molster hinted, they're working on a software solution but it's holiday season... nothing happening in the next few days, I'm afraid.
I can assure you, ruksak, that Curse and all its mods are not ignoring this and doing everything they can. However, as Thornagol hinted, this was a new attack that managed to get past the established spam filters.
As you might have noticed, the spam got significantly less in recent weeks - because the Indian love problem solution (c) spam is almost completely covered by the spam system. The Korean spam stuff is something new that hit us unprepared.
Also, it's kind of a bad coincidence as the mods are busy with personal life (d'oh!) concerning the upcoming holidays ;-) However, I just marked several hundred (!) of those spam messages manually, so there's some hope that the system will start catching those bots. If not - keep in mind that all forums (even the official B.Net forums) are hit by those and similar attacks. It's an arms race, and no system can ever be completely spam-free. Especially since there's a thin line between keeping bots out and making the sign-up/posting process awkward and alienating for new users.
Thanks for your post though, great to see all of you caring about the site so much :-) Maybe those who are responsible for configuring/changing the forum software can take up your suggestions about new posts. We'll see, I don't know what's possible/feasible at this point. Thanks for your input!
Captchas are no obstacle for bots (or spam posters, which sometimes aren't even bots but humans). Captchas do only annoy/hinder "legit users". Captchas are essentially useless and will not be implemented ever, as far as I've read from previous posts of the Curse software developers.
I'm not sure where to post this... but I'll probably bump this every now and then:
Please do not post in any of those spam threads. Do not post any witty comments, do not post just to tell that you reported a bot (we can see it, no worries), and do not ask about spam-related questions in those threads but *here*.
Q: Why aren't those bots automatically detected?
A: Some of them are, but some of them are not. If the spam filter is a bit more aggressive you'd see completely legit threads disappear (we already have to un-mark threads, posts, signatures, and builds as "not spam" occasionally).
Q: Why should I not post in those threads?
A: It's a free bump for a spammer, which is success for them. Also, after the spam bot has been banned, we have to manually delete your post as well. Last but not least - I'm not sure about it, but just an observation - a thread with replies has a lower likelihood to be detected as spam thread.
Thanks!
We keep banning them, no worries, it's just popping up faster than we can ban it at times. In the meantime, I think there's no need to reporting them... if it's so obvious spam that appears on the "recent post" list I don't think reporting is necessary ;-)
It would be nice if it's only a small wave during a fixed time ;-)
There was a new wave of spam (different to the previous one), so the system had to "adapt" again. It started about 17 hours ago and has been going on constantly since then. What you saw was just the initial spam before the system new about it (after deleting a few of those threads it's now under control, hopefully).
There were close to 1000 threads of spam just in the past 17 hours... so what you saw was only a small part. Hopefully we won't be bothered by it a lot anytime soon, thanks to Molster and the rest of the DFans team.
Definitely seems that the system works.
And honestly... 10 posts to make a new thread is kind of counter-productive because most people start by asking a question in a new thread (I think that's what I did when I joined as well). It would definitely alienate some new users, but bots would just post (or wait and post, if you add a time-out) to hit the 10 post mark and then make the thread. We've had this rule before as you might remember.
Happy Holidays to you too :-) I think we're all guarding the hen house every now and then, but not as regularly as on a "normal day" of course.
As Molster hinted, they're working on a software solution but it's holiday season... nothing happening in the next few days, I'm afraid.
As you might have noticed, the spam got significantly less in recent weeks - because the Indian love problem solution (c) spam is almost completely covered by the spam system. The Korean spam stuff is something new that hit us unprepared.
Also, it's kind of a bad coincidence as the mods are busy with personal life (d'oh!) concerning the upcoming holidays ;-) However, I just marked several hundred (!) of those spam messages manually, so there's some hope that the system will start catching those bots. If not - keep in mind that all forums (even the official B.Net forums) are hit by those and similar attacks. It's an arms race, and no system can ever be completely spam-free. Especially since there's a thin line between keeping bots out and making the sign-up/posting process awkward and alienating for new users.
Thanks for your post though, great to see all of you caring about the site so much :-) Maybe those who are responsible for configuring/changing the forum software can take up your suggestions about new posts. We'll see, I don't know what's possible/feasible at this point. Thanks for your input!