Forums / Maintenance / Report Problems

Working on it. Don't post in them please.

Life is calling as well, so you might have to wait until another mod comes on.

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For those curious, this was how both General and JFF looked like for pages in a row:

I'm getting started deleting these. Random's warning now includes the threat of me whining at you.

Is there any way to lock the forums so that no one can post new threads for a bit? Because this isn't just a stray spambot, this is an organized freaking army.

It should be shut down, it's damn crazy up in here! I just got to the forums, damn is this awful.

I think the best part is, they're advertising escorts in Mumbai. They're missing their target market by a very large margin. Guess that's why they spammed so much.

I cleared the General section. However, new bots just started showing up. I need someone with ban powers up here.
I checked up to 8 pages of JFF and gave up. They were all full of spam. I'll keep deleting, but I think it'll be better if I can keep General clear and allow discussion to resume there.

I believe there is some possibility to edit an entire board at once, but that is restricted to staff only. Unfortunately they're not in the office yet.

Thanks to the mods helping. Thankfully this train has Wi-Fi, so I'll get to permabanning those MDF.

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All the spambots I've seen so far I've permabanned, but unfortunately new ones appear and with all those pages there can be some I missed. Please check the users at times, and post them here if you see new ones pop up. I'd like to keep this organised.

JFF is clear. Team KYM has captured the control point.

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Jokes on them, you should see how swole I got deleting all these threads.

Awesomely done MDF (and others).

I'll keep this thread open for a few more hours in case some should pop up. After that it can be locked.

Oh good! You got me a screen cap. Now, to call those numbers…

Wow, great job, guys. This is amazing teamwork.

Apparently, there are more spam threads though. I'll work on clearing those out. I think RM is at work/school, but I don't have anything I'm obligated to today. If you see something that's up for a while, then let me know, but I should get to it.

Where are these new threads exactly?

Why, I deleted them, of course. As well as the spammer.

Ah. Looks like the spam Cyber and I took care earlier was just a precursor to this. It seemed to be gone after all 4 spambots were deleted. Hopefully everything's under control now. Also, this seems like a fine time to propose a 1 hour limit between people making threads.

Meh. 1 is kinda a long time. Maybe 30 min or even just 15.

I have to disagree. 1 hour isn't all that long, and there are a few members who certainly act like spambots at times.

Considering that very few matters/game ideas/random thoughts need to be posted within an hour of each other, I disagree.

Now if that was restricted to certain boards (i.e., JFF, General,) then that would stop a large amount of spam thread incidents like this one (most spam threads are posted in General and JFF,) without hindering potentially important posts in Meme Research and Site-Related (I'm not sure how easily difference can be coded in.)

On the whole, anything that's time intensive can be taken into the IRC, PM'd to various mods/admins, and/or communicated via email among mods/admins.
 
More simply, unless there's a reason outside of "I would like to be able to post two JFF threads in an hour, because it would be annoying to wait," I think preventing this sort of spam spree outweighs that by a lot.

It seems like one spam-bot moved away from the forums and decided to created 11 spam entries!

tishatondon

Check the General guys

Spambout found. Seek & destroy.

The entry spammer is gone, but the entries are still up!

Also the spam entries

Sheesh, I must've hidden / deleted over a hundred threads and entries. It's interesting the effort they went to; adding in a origin ('India'), a logo and even NSFW'ing it.

I'm for the hour limit for entries, if we have one for image uploads, why not threads?

Omigosh, the raids started now, once again.
bradyhopes88

edit Aren't call girls illegal in india. If they are so, we can give the Indian authorities their number.
edit Another one. Zuharah1

The spambots are at it again.

Please nobody post about this in JFF. Let the mods do their thing then pretend it didn't happen.

Whoo…We certainly need something. I thought this was just going to be a Valentine's effort…

EDIT: Looks to be about 7 pages deep, and three spammers (as of now.) I'm going to work from the most recent post to the earliest if another moderator sees this and wants to help.

EDIT2: They're active and fairly "smart." Same username with a slight variation came up under a different IP to begin to spam again.

Thank god you mods noticed, I am happy you guys noticed this early in the day in my area at the least.
Keep up the work of cleaning, I bet it possibly won't take long till its all gone.
(Personally, I think its just a basic spam raid)
/Cpt.obvious

Gah, they're EVERYWHEEEERRE.

I've been working down from the 10 pages of JFF, but they're in General and Meme Research too. I think Verbose has been doing Meme Research so I'll move to General if or when I finish cleaning out JFF.

EDIT: Looks like General has been cut down, good job!

EDIT 2: Aaaand JFF is done, thanks to whomever helped out when it was down to 1-2 pages, I think.

I'm going to beg James to implement that 1 hour rule, if it doesn't slow down soon.

Ok. I'll focus on Meme Research then. That's probably an easier way to keep things organized.

EDIT: Meme Research is clean up to this point. I'll start on General (most recent to first spam thread?)

EDIT2: Huh, I guess we're working fast that we thought (or there's another moderator/admin working here as well.) Thanks for all of the work, guys.

Good work everyone!
Hopefully the spam will stop by the weekend D:

gives all the mods a gold star

That "other" mod/admin isn't me, but I currently have a shitty public WiFi. I'll get to deleting as well.

Edit: And then suddenly everything is gone. Oh well, still got to delete 3, so scored some points. I'll put a note of this through the mods and staff, see if we can get that posting limit.

Motherfucker it begins again
https://knowyourmeme.com/users/rashukhan602

Got 'im.

I may go back to sleep soon, but I'll try to stay up and see if it happens again. I hope not. I don't think the admins will get to work for maybe another hour (and they probably have other things to do than to deal with spam.)

To prevent this kind of attack in the future, we should make a longer necessary delay between making threads. If you can only make 1 thread every 5 minutes (nobody should do it faster than that anyway) we don't end up with hundreds of threads in the hour we don't happen to have anyone online.

That or we need a boatload more guys with mod powers.
TY Verbose, I was deleting his threads as fast as they popped up but then I had to go work. .-.

You mean like a quota? I'm fine with that.

The time limit should be a lot bigger than that. No one needs to create a thread every 5 min or 10min. Our forums aren't that big. Actually, there is no reason for a single user to create a thread every 5 or 10min or even 60min.

If the limit was an hour, regular users wouldn't be able to spam pointless threads (Alex and other copycat threads a few days ago). Just because they feel like making a bunch of pointless threads that are going to get deleted and/or locked anyway.

But users would still be able to create threads for games and other fun topic threads in JFF.

suggestion: implement a code that scans for keywords

notice how that several threads contained certain keywords like mumbai, callgirls, escorts, etc

if more than one closely-made-together thread contains a bunch of similar keywords…something happens, like:
-prevent them from being posted
-send to mods for approval before being posted?

thanks for taking care of this while i was afk guys!

fixes are being discussed via mod email, thanks for the great input too everyone

Another one. For some reason it won't let me delete the entire thread. He posted in it 3 times and I deleted all of his posts from bottom to top, which has worked for me other times. Curses.
https://knowyourmeme.com/users/mnaishroi

EDIT: Nevermind, it's working now.

I believe your suggested code would certainly have a great effect, but a bit of collateral damage. No one would be able to make fun of mumbai callgirls in JFF threads or simply discussing an event in mumbai. Perhaps a meme comes up where a politician is up in arms about call girls and the Internet is "doing what it do" in making fun of said politician.

To prevent that, the code would have to be more complex like (as you said) checking to see if other threads had been made by the same user or other users with certain keywords that will likely change over time (e.g., one day, it's escorts; the next day is prostitutes; the next is call girls; the next, wrinkle cream…) It would take time to come up with it and put into practical effect.
 
Especially compared to what seems to be a much more simple code in just establishing an 60 minute restriction on the creation of threads (not posting in them).

Again, unless someone has a complaint for the time limit outside of "It's annoying to have to wait an hour to make a second thread," I don't think the inconvenience outweighs the the load on James for coming up with the actual lines for the code and then coding your proposed code.

During the next spam we shouldn't delete anything that gets posted in JFF. With all the complaints about random threads getting locked too fast and shitty moderation the last couple of days, this certainly falls under something we apparently "lock too fast". These escort services hold more topic than some of the stuff we don't lock.

Give them a few days, see how long they can keep up without moderation during these sprees.

Hmmph. I understand the potential annoyance of the moderators when dealing with complaints that are not the concern of the moderators, but this post just seems catty.

…Have you read any annoyed RandomMan?

heh

Another spam bot, that not only created a entry, but also commenting on it.

sonyking

It seems some spam bot has figured out the system: create an entry or thread and it will stay on the trending bar/ on the front of te forums page. How ever, i hope capture does not have to be implemented for the fourms soon.

I messed that up. You have to comment on it for it to stay trending, however you only have to wait 30 sec b4 commenting again. This prevents double post, but not spam.

Even as a joke, that seems fucked up. If a child complains about their chores being too hard, you talk them around, not double their workload.

Now, let's see if they return tonight..

There's JFF.

Seriously, there's no way that this is a random targeting at this point.

I FOUND ONE!

And he's…

… double posting!!

Screenshot for you. I did not make any posts, just screenshotted.