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Forum Signature Spam: Let's discuss how to handle..

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iphigenie:
Actually i think there's a setting somewhere in SMF to only show a person's sig once per thread - that might be a good start to lighten things up

ak_:
Ok forget about what i said earlier, i didn't have my 24" monitor at this time. Use big signatures, i don't care :D :D

Darwin:
I'm not wed, particularlly, to the notion of signatures. I think that the solution proposed is sensible - it allows people who are committed to hanging out here the freedom to express themselves without allowing spammers to waste our time. I'd suggest that the limit be 10 posts before a signature is enabled. Of course, I envision with this kind of policy in place and this thread freely available via Google, etc. spammers will just make sure that they generate a few more posts than the limit and move on. Maybe add a probationary period as well and make the minimum post limit more tricky, like tie it to recent activity at the end of the probationary period. Spammers are unlikely to want to come back 12 days after joining just to make a post or two (in addition to the 10 post minimum) so that they can qualify to spam the boards after 14 days, or whatever.

These are just suggestions - I realise that someone is going to have to code this and monitor it, so it may not be very practical.

Carol Haynes:
How about a Karma type system - any post that is deemed spam or nuisance automatically means that the offender loses signature rights for 10^(n+1) posts where n is the number of times they offended.

This would mean there would have to be 10 posts before a user can have a signature. If they post something deemed of sufficient nuisance value then they would have signature rights suspended for 100 posts, next time 1000 posts ...

OK 10 might be the wrong factor to use - how about 5 + 5^(n+1) which would go 10, 30, 130 ... or 8 + 2^(n+1) which would go 10, 12, 16, 24 ...

It could be automated so that everytime someone has a message moved to the sin bin by a moderator their value of n is incremented.

Having said that what is to stop the same person posting under 100 different aliases?

mouser:
i don't think we need to get so complicated..
the people who register to spam do not have any intention of wasting time making real posts, etc.  they are looking for a quick way to spam people with minimal effort.

that's why simply blocking signatures until a few posts solves the problem because we catch the fake posts before they hit that many.

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