UBB.Developers Forums Community Development Promoting Your Community Forum Showcase Spamming.

Is Spamming a big problem on anyones board? What procedures do you take to stop the spamming if it ever occurs?

And what do you think is the most effective way of banning?

We had someone who had over 2000 posts in about a month, I think .

On our coummunity right now, we don't have a problem with spammers yet. My cure for spammers would be to cleanup some posts, and to correct their post total, and send them a warning that spamming will not be tolerated. If it conitunes, then it could result in posting rights suspended and/or banning.

I never tollerate spammers. Name Banned, then IP banned for insureance - I learned a lot of spammers enjoy registering a few times to tick us off.

I think we need to consider a definition for spamming and that it might mean different things to different people

Someone who has 2000 posts in a month might not have a life otherwise, but if their posts were, for the most part, helpful, entertaining, and built upon the community feel of your site - then I don't consider them as harmful and actually wished I had a few of them at my personal site. They give your site activity, definitely more positive than the dead sites a lot of us run... and encourage others to post as well... activity begets activity. One reason why you won't see me chiding someone for posting a lot... hard disk space is cheap

Spammers that only post to promote their own site and activities reserve a special place on my ban button tho...

The question is always one of quality of posts not quantity of posts.

Many times people who post frequently are just trying to get noticed and feel as though they belong. If you reprimand them publically it is likely to make them feel bad.

If frequency of posts is a problem, it is always a good idea to address the problem privately, whether an e-mail or a private message. Make the user feel welcome, but also correct them if they are not really making a contribution.

If they person is "spamming" in a sense of self-promotion, then that is something that needs an administrative response. Editing post, deleting, warning and possibly banning if they continue to ignore requests to stop.

Allen is right though, there are some people who have no life

-Tacks

Like Allen said, it depends on your definition of spamming. I have a few members that already have 500+ posts and we just re-opened 2 weeks ago. They never promote anything, never bash anyone and have a lot of fun while they post. I don't consider them spammers, but others may because the amount of posts in such a little time frame. I like it having very active members, gives me something to look forward to when I go to post on there myself. It also encourages the others to post more. If you consider that spamming, then I'm all for it!

I define it as useless postings (ie: a post someone posted in DEBATES, then someone replies with "YEA! I AGREE!" without further information, or replies to everything!)

those can be very useful posts, especially on an otherwise slow site...

Well, we basically have a post which is mostly spamming... It was once a post for people to post their pictures, but it turned into a 148 page topic... That's where the majority of people will go when they feel like spamming.

148 Pages? My gawd how many posts per page?

Yeah, 148 pages is a lot!

Since my board will take any activity we can get, there's not MUCH SPAMming. I mean, my board's active, but we don't enforce it THAT much. There are rules that are more enforced. But I had one moderator ban some fool on an IRC chat on chat room for a totally different site. And the guy who got banned threatened to SPAM a board he mod's at. So we got like 16 (like Greg said, SPAMmers do register a lot) more members. But he didn't even post once!

~Jon

The thread is at 2206 posts. I wouldn't quite say spamming I guess, we don't get to much of that... It is just one of those useless topics.

As an admin, you need to look at the behaviour of the user, and see whether or not it is tolderated on your board.

There are ways to limit spamming and useless posts. Some people have used dedicated threads or even forums so people can test their sigs, or other such things.

If and when you determine that someone is doing something that you disapprove of, then you should try to squelch it. If you don't mind, and your members don't mind then...no harm, no foul.

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