Admins - Please delete all the spam threads started by cristine lim

[Ariel Karlinsky]

They take up most of pages 1 and 2 of the forum, and are just gibberish.

[Nick Cox]

Agreed, and no doubt this will be fixed when key people get in to work.

[Marcos Almeida]

Now we have something wrong with messages from "jessa liam" as well.

[Richard Williams]

Other than destroying BBSs, what exactly to spammers gain by this? If my translator is working right, these messages seem to have something to do with casinos.

[Richard Williams]

It would be a little bit of a nuisance, but maybe all new posters should have to get approved before being allowed to post.

[Ariel Karlinsky]

Other than destroying BBSs, what exactly to spammers gain by this? If my translator is working right, these messages seem to have something to do with casinos.

This might be "SEO juice" - if "Casino Stata" has links and it's name mentioned in various (reputable) pages on the internet, google(and other search engines) rank it higher.

[daniel klein]

It would be a little bit of a nuisance, but maybe all new posters should have to get approved before being allowed to post.

The mods are doing a great job deleting these spam messages pretty quickly. However, some kind of automated (semi-) solution should be possible without affecting regular users. I do not have any knowledge about forum software, but perhaps one could limit the number of started threads per time unit?

Best
Daniel

[Belinda Foster]

The administrators need to introduce CAPTCHA for new users. This will prevent automated sign-ups.

[Nick Cox]

As I understand it, these spammers don't care positively or even negatively about Stata. They just to want to post advertisements so that search engines are more likely to find references to certain sites.

I don't think there is any evidence here for automated sign-ups. It's really not difficult for anyone so determined first to join in the usual way and then to post a new question about once a minute.

I don't think there is any way of approving members that wouldn't have downsides, e.g. be more work for the administrators.

[daniel klein]

Do you see any downside to a restriction of the number of threads that one can open within a given time period? If it is technically possible, I would guess that allowing one new thread to be created each 10 or 15 Minutes would usually suffice for serious members. Something in this direction would at least prevent entire pages to be filled with crap and give the admins more time to remove it.

Best
Daniel

[Belinda Foster]

Once set up, CAPTCHA does not require any more work from the administrators and from my experience it is a pretty good deterrent.

[Philip Jones]

Do you see any downside to a restriction of the number of threads that one can open within a given time period? If it is technically possible, I would guess that allowing one new thread to be created each 10 or 15 Minutes would usually suffice for serious members. Something in this direction would at least prevent entire pages to be filled with crap and give the admins more time to remove it.

Best
Daniel

Great idea, and no impediment at all for serious contributors. After all, even if one has many questions to pose, they can be written in a text editor and then posted throughout any given day. Hopefully this is technically feasible, since, once set up, it would not create any additional workload for admins.

[Nick Cox]

Belinda #11:

My guess is different as any computer user can get past a CAPTCHA; it is what they do thereafter that is crucial.

But (1) only StataCorp can tell us what is likely to work (2) it is unlikely that they will want to get really detailed in public about what they do or might do about spam.

[Friedrich Huebler]

Great idea, and no impediment at all for serious contributors. After all, even if one has many questions to pose, they can be written in a text editor and then posted throughout any given day. Hopefully this is technically feasible, since, once set up, it would not create any additional workload for admins.

I would not be in favor of this. I also don't see how this keeps out serious spammers, who can easily use a multitude of different accounts.

[Richard Williams]

The spammers love to attack at night! Maybe somebody from Stata-Australia can take over monitoring the board then. ;-)