# so y'all gonna fix this or nah?



## Willow (Jul 6, 2016)

like actually fix it?

this is actually a legitimate concern because, while I really don't use this forum that often anymore, it's kind of unfair to the new people and everyone else who chose to return that this place gets swamped with bots every couple of weeks and no one's around to take care of it. even if I don't like this place, I think the users deserve a usable forum where they don't have to wade through pages upon pages of spam just to find a topic

maybe even hire some new mods or something. it would be a start at least


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## Sergei Nóhomo (Jul 6, 2016)

Nah


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## Deleted member 82554 (Jul 6, 2016)

Pssh, come on man, you know the current staff can never replace the efficiency of the old staff.


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## Hair_Everywhere (Jul 6, 2016)

Mmmmm... spam and cheese sandwich


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## Shameful_Cole (Jul 6, 2016)

Mr. Fox said:


> Pssh, come on man, you know the current staff can never replace the efficiency of the old staff.


Wait... There's staff here?


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## Willow (Jul 6, 2016)

Shameful_Cole said:


> Wait... There's staff here?


I've only heard rumors of staff presence here. they only appear to those who they deem worthy of their company

I've also heard that if you say "Red Rocket" three times in a mirror, one of these staff members may appear and steal your dog


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## TeslaSkunk (Jul 6, 2016)

Don't get your hopes up, i doubt this will be fixed any time soon.... i dunno I'm just pessimistic about it


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## Willow (Jul 6, 2016)

TeslaSkunk said:


> Don't get your hopes up, i doubt this will be fixed any time soon.... i dunno I'm just pessimistic about it


oh I know. I'm not really expecting anything to be done about it since nothing's really been done about it this whole time but, I still thought that maybe calling out the staff on this incompetence would prompt some sort of response. 
I mean..it's worked in the past :u


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## TeslaSkunk (Jul 6, 2016)

Willow said:


> oh I know. I'm not really expecting anything to be done about it since nothing's really been done about it this whole time but, I still thought that maybe calling out the staff on this incompetence would prompt some sort of response.
> I mean..it's worked in the past :u


guess youre right in saying we gotta try something at least, shit always continues to happen if people keep silent about it. Then again, I'm just concerned that people who call out stuff like this will be....."Moderated".....deleted for nothing


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## Willow (Jul 6, 2016)

TeslaSkunk said:


> guess youre right in saying we gotta try something at least, shit always continues to happen if people keep silent about it. Then again, I'm just concerned that people who call out stuff like this will be....."Moderated".....deleted for nothing


it's not anything new, though I'd be pretty disappointed seeing as that's what led to the site getting shutdown the first time
on the other hand, it would at least give me more reasons why this place is a sinking ship


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## DravenDonovan (Jul 6, 2016)

What about spam spam spam bacon and spam?


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## Kellan Meig'h (Jul 7, 2016)

SPAM, egg and potato scramble. Black pepper and Tabasco to taste.

Serve with toast or buttermilk biscuit, butter and jelly. Coffee or orange juice on the side.

You may substitute fresh fruit of the day for toast/biscuit.


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## jayhusky (Jul 7, 2016)

Willow said:


> like actually fix it?
> 
> this is actually a legitimate concern because, while I really don't use this forum that often anymore, it's kind of unfair to the new people and everyone else who chose to return that this place gets swamped with bots every couple of weeks and no one's around to take care of it. even if I don't like this place, I think the users deserve a usable forum where they don't have to wade through pages upon pages of spam just to find a topic
> 
> maybe even hire some new mods or something. it would be a start at least



... in time. ( I believe those are the operative words at the moment).
Heck I'd volunteer to be a mod. Just saying.


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## Deleted member 82554 (Jul 7, 2016)

Willow said:


> I've only heard rumors of staff presence here. they only appear to those who they deem worthy of their company


Or when you have an argument or when there are infractions to be handed out.


Willow said:


> I've also heard that if you say "Red Rocket" three times in a mirror, one of these staff members may appear and steal your dog


#ded


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## PlusThirtyOne (Jul 7, 2016)

i don't know about you guys but i've turned the spam bots into a game. i've been collection users in my block list like Pokemon! Messages posted are experience points, trophy points are their level and if they have an avatar they count as shinies. Since i tend to lurk and post late at night, i keep catching all the bestest Spamemon!

Gotta block 'em all!


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## quoting_mungo (Jul 7, 2016)

I don't have access to muck with forum settings (and there's honestly no good reason I should have more administrative privileges than I currently do), but I do try to clear out any spam posted around when I get up in the morning (keep in mind I'm like 5+ hours ahead of most or all of North America BUT I have a seriously wonky sleep schedule). When I can I also try to check in at least a couple times during the course of the day to see if there's any new fires that urgently need putting out.

That's the most I personally can do, and I'm doing it to the best of my abilities. If you happen to have a schedule that overlaps with mine in just the wrong way, you may find you encounter the spam bots more frequently, while users who first get on around noon my time generally come online to a relatively tidy forum (unless I had a bad night or other committments that prevented or delayed my checking in that particular morning).

You can make it easier on me by reporting the bots, and *never* respond to their messages or I might end up banning you by accident.


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## PlusThirtyOne (Jul 7, 2016)

quoting_mungo said:


> I don't have access to muck with forum settings (and there's honestly no good reason I should have more administrative privileges than I currently do), but I do try to clear out any spam posted around when I get up in the morning (keep in mind I'm like 5+ hours ahead of most or all of North America BUT I have a seriously wonky sleep schedule). When I can I also try to check in at least a couple times during the course of the day to see if there's any new fires that urgently need putting out.
> 
> That's the most I personally can do, and I'm doing it to the best of my abilities. If you happen to have a schedule that overlaps with mine in just the wrong way, you may find you encounter the spam bots more frequently, while users who first get on around noon my time generally come online to a relatively tidy forum (unless I had a bad night or other committments that prevented or delayed my checking in that particular morning).
> 
> You can make it easier on me by reporting the bots, and *never* respond to their messages or I might end up banning you by accident.


So, just to help make things easier, does reporting actually HELP with the bots? Does that somehow make it more convenient for you to identify them? if everybody reported the same bots and threads, would that not somehow overwhelm you with redundant messages? i never report the spam bots because i assumed somebody else already has. i imagined you logging in and seeing a trillion reports for the same bots, so i guess what i'm asking is: Does mass reporting hinder you or help you? i imagined it would be more annoying. it's pretty obvious to anyone checking the forum, which are spam and which are legit users and threads.i have no idea what your interface looks and works like so i assumed mass reporting would be more of a hassle.
Also, as i'm sure you're aware, having to block the bots isn't the problem. it's the huge gapping holes and pages of nothing that appear immediately after that makes the forums unbrowseable.


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## modfox (Jul 7, 2016)

i like korean spam, it may contain some asian products though so be careful
and it may have off prawns


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## quoting_mungo (Jul 7, 2016)

PlusThirtyOne said:


> So, just to help make things easier, does reporting actually HELP with the bots? Does that somehow make it more convenient for you to identify them? if everybody reported the same bots and threads, would that not somehow overwhelm you with redundant messages? i never report the spam bots because i assumed somebody else already has. i imagined you logging in and seeing a trillion reports for the same bots, so i guess what i'm asking is: Does mass reporting hinder you or help you? i imagined it would be more annoying. it's pretty obvious to anyone checking the forum, which are spam and which are legit users and threads.i have no idea what your interface looks and works like so i assumed mass reporting would be more of a hassle.


Generally speaking, reporting helps. The tools we have for clearing out spam will also close up all reports of that user's content for us, and duplicate forum reports get consolidated automatically. So if we have a spam user named qwerty123456 and 10 people report them, there'll still only be one report "item" about user qwerty123456, though it will contain the report messages from all the users who filed reports.

Reporting every single spam thread by a user could be a bit of a hindrance, but it's pretty marginal, since dealing with the user account through our spam cleaning tools will still address all of those reports. If you want to be sure you're definitely not causing/contributing to a flood of reports, just reporting the spam user account, rather than their messages/threads, will do fine. The major (like, 200+ posts in the space of a couple of hours) spammers are generally reasonably easy to find, but sometimes if there's been a lot of legitimate activity spammers with posts in the single digits or teens might slip under the radar. 

(And because of limitations with the tools we have, sometimes you may see a spammer suddenly end up with 10 or 20 page threads with just messages by them, where they previously only had single-message threads. That's us doing prep work for cleanup. At least it should somewhat reduce the "pages and pages of nothing" problem after you block a spammer, until we're done.)


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## PlusThirtyOne (Jul 7, 2016)

quoting_mungo said:


> Generally speaking, reporting helps. The tools we have for clearing out spam will also close up all reports of that user's content for us, and duplicate forum reports get consolidated automatically. So if we have a spam user named qwerty123456 and 10 people report them, there'll still only be one report "item" about user qwerty123456, though it will contain the report messages from all the users who filed reports.
> 
> Reporting every single spam thread by a user could be a bit of a hindrance, but it's pretty marginal, since dealing with the user account through our spam cleaning tools will still address all of those reports. If you want to be sure you're definitely not causing/contributing to a flood of reports, just reporting the spam user account, rather than their messages/threads, will do fine. The major (like, 200+ posts in the space of a couple of hours) spammers are generally reasonably easy to find, but sometimes if there's been a lot of legitimate activity spammers with posts in the single digits or teens might slip under the radar.
> 
> (And because of limitations with the tools we have, sometimes you may see a spammer suddenly end up with 10 or 20 page threads with just messages by them, where they previously only had single-message threads. That's us doing prep work for cleanup. At least it should somewhat reduce the "pages and pages of nothing" problem after you block a spammer, until we're done.)


Good to know!


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## jayhusky (Jul 7, 2016)

quoting_mungo said:


> Generally speaking, reporting helps. The tools we have for clearing out spam will also close up all reports of that user's content for us, and duplicate forum reports get consolidated automatically. So if we have a spam user named qwerty123456 and 10 people report them, there'll still only be one report "item" about user qwerty123456, though it will contain the report messages from all the users who filed reports.)


 --- _Quote truncated for brevity.
_
Question!, is it possible for a mod or add-on to be installed that auto filters the threads if specific domains appear? 
That way all posts with the banned domains are auto-collated into a seperate sub forum (invisible to the normal users) and the staff can run through and verify they are indeed spam and proceed from there? I did see a nifty mod on XF's website, but since I don't hold a license for this software, I cannot gain access to it currently.


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## nerdbat (Jul 7, 2016)

quoting_mungo said:


> I don't have access to muck with forum settings (and there's honestly no good reason I should have more administrative privileges than I currently do), but I do try to clear out any spam posted around when I get up in the morning (keep in mind I'm like 5+ hours ahead of most or all of North America BUT I have a seriously wonky sleep schedule). When I can I also try to check in at least a couple times during the course of the day to see if there's any new fires that urgently need putting out.
> 
> That's the most I personally can do, and I'm doing it to the best of my abilities. If you happen to have a schedule that overlaps with mine in just the wrong way, you may find you encounter the spam bots more frequently, while users who first get on around noon my time generally come online to a relatively tidy forum (unless I had a bad night or other committments that prevented or delayed my checking in that particular morning).



But as a staff member who probably has some connection with site's owners, do you have any theoretical opportunity to nag the right people and make them do something about it? Not implying that you're doing bad work - in fact quite the opposite, since you have to resolve a crapton of reports for a problem that is, to be fair, rather easy to solve on programming level, and overloading staff members with excessive work instead of spending a couple of days to fix it up is counter-productive to say the least. I wonder if site's owners and programmers know about the issue and hold it for a better moment due to all that mess with lost accounts, or they're completely oblivious to the problem - if former, then they should probably speak up or something, and if latter, there's some serious case of miscommunication here.


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## ArielMT (Jul 7, 2016)

quoting_mungo said:


> I don't have access to muck with forum settings (and there's honestly no good reason I should have more administrative privileges than I currently do), but I do try to clear out any spam posted around when I get up in the morning (keep in mind I'm like 5+ hours ahead of most or all of North America BUT I have a seriously wonky sleep schedule). When I can I also try to check in at least a couple times during the course of the day to see if there's any new fires that urgently need putting out.
> 
> That's the most I personally can do, and I'm doing it to the best of my abilities. If you happen to have a schedule that overlaps with mine in just the wrong way, you may find you encounter the spam bots more frequently, while users who first get on around noon my time generally come online to a relatively tidy forum (unless I had a bad night or other committments that prevented or delayed my checking in that particular morning).
> 
> You can make it easier on me by reporting the bots, and *never* respond to their messages or I might end up banning you by accident.



Does XenForo not let you mark a member as a spammer, dealing with all that spammer's widely scattered posts and threads in one place?

The forum admins do need to configure properly the anti-spam tools that are already at your disposal.  The reason you find such a steady stream of spam fires to put out is that, if they're not missing entirely or as effective as snake oil cure-alls, they're so badly misconfigured that the bots re-register with no difficulty at all.

Your forum staffing situation doesn't help, either.  You personally are one of only four of the 10 staff who can be called at least minimally active.  (Dragoneer, Moderator-Gazelle, and SSJ3Mewtwo are the other three active staff, all four of you on weekly or better to your membership's relief.)  The remaining six, whose weight you collectively are pulling due to their inactivity, seem to have taken a vacation at least a month long: Asia Neko and Chase for seven weeks, yak for 10 weeks, Sciggles for 10 months, net-cat for 17 months, and Moderator-Dragon apparently never logging in.  While spammer registration prevention will go a very long way to controlling your spam problem, staffing active enough to catch _someone_ on watch more often than not will finish off your spam problem for good.


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## Willow (Jul 7, 2016)

quoting_mungo said:


> That's the most I personally can do, and I'm doing it to the best of my abilities. If you happen to have a schedule that overlaps with mine in just the wrong way, you may find you encounter the spam bots more frequently, while users who first get on around noon my time generally come online to a relatively tidy forum (unless I had a bad night or other committments that prevented or delayed my checking in that particular morning).


so basically..you need active mods




ok


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## Endless/Nameless (Jul 8, 2016)




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## jayhusky (Jul 8, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> Does XenForo not let you mark a member as a spammer, dealing with all that spammer's widely scattered posts and threads in one place?
> 
> The forum admins do need to configure properly the anti-spam tools that are already at your disposal.  The reason you find such a steady stream of spam fires to put out is that, if they're not missing entirely or as effective as snake oil cure-alls, they're so badly misconfigured that the bots re-register with no difficulty at all.
> 
> Your forum staffing situation doesn't help, either.  You personally are one of only four of the 10 staff who can be called at least minimally active.  (Dragoneer, Moderator-Gazelle, and SSJ3Mewtwo are the other three active staff, all four of you on weekly or better to your membership's relief.)  The remaining six, whose weight you collectively are pulling due to their inactivity, seem to have taken a vacation at least a month long: Asia Neko and Chase for seven weeks, yak for 10 weeks, Sciggles for 10 months, net-cat for 17 months, and Moderator-Dragon apparently never logging in.  While spammer registration prevention will go a very long way to controlling your spam problem, staffing active enough to catch _someone_ on watch more often than not will finish off your spam problem for good.



I've offered my help, truly I have, although if they did pick me now (which I doubt), I do have my own terms that I work by, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Sciggles administrative powers only went via mainsite?? I don't remember her being made admin here on the forums as well, though in fairness, there has been such a storm of stuff going on here, that I may have missed it somewhat. 
As for Yak, I wouldn't really expect him to log in here unless we were being told about something to do with mainsite, as that's more his area of expertise than the forums. Sure he helps out here, but since we went to XF, I have noted a massive drop in staffing appearances.


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## ArielMT (Jul 8, 2016)

jayhusky said:


> I've offered my help, truly I have, although if they did pick me now (which I doubt), I do have my own terms that I work by, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Sciggles administrative powers only went via mainsite?? I don't remember her being made admin here on the forums as well, though in fairness, there has been such a storm of stuff going on here, that I may have missed it somewhat.



Sciggles got the forum admin job at the same time she got the main site admin job, mid-January 2012.  None of us were told, not even Arshes, until the drama was well under way.  She is ill-qualified to moderate a forum, but we barely remember she's a forum admin because she's been completely derelict in that capacity since about Summer 2012, doing nothing but rarely posting as an otherwise-ordinary user.



jayhusky said:


> As for Yak, I wouldn't really expect him to log in here unless we were being told about something to do with mainsite, as that's more his area of expertise than the forums. Sure he helps out here, but since we went to XF, I have noted a massive drop in staffing appearances.



While yak remains in FA's inner circle, a state I disagree with ever more passionately, he should be assigned a special forum role like the FA:U staffers here are and relieved of his forum admin role.


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## jayhusky (Jul 8, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> Sciggles got the forum admin job at the same time she got the main site admin job, mid-January 2012.  None of us were told, not even Arshes, until the drama was well under way.  She is ill-qualified to moderate a forum, but we barely remember she's a forum admin because she's been completely derelict in that capacity since about Summer 2012, doing nothing but rarely posting as an otherwise-ordinary user.



Oh right, well, yeah, might as well revoke the permissions.

I think honestly, admins MUST be operative on a forum at least twice a week (even if they're just checking in on messages etc), since most boards have an admin CP where they can leave notes for one another, if one is to be away for a while due to exceptional circumstance(s) then that's all fair, but seriously, I think staff should show up here at least 1-2 times a week, just to keep an eye on things.

If Dragoneer made me an admin (and accepted my terms for being one), I'm pretty damn sure I could turn this place upside down and make it a whole lot better.
Not tooting my own trumpet, far from it, but just saying that I'm active here a few times a week. I know many others are here moreso, but just saying.




ArielMT said:


> While yak remains in FA's inner circle, a state I disagree with ever more passionately, he should be assigned a special forum role like the FA:U staffers here are and relieved of his forum admin role.



I do have to agree that, FA keeping such a close circle on the coders, which in all fairness seem to be_ friends of_, or _friends of friends_ of, staff members (no I'm not having a go here, just noting a small trend that's all) doesn't do much help to FA in the long run, as there are many competent coders here willing to help, but thats by the point for this conversation.
As for Yak, here on the forums, I don't personally understand why he remains an admin here, I did when it was the MyBB/Vbulletin software as he helped integrate the sites BBCode parser into the forum to allow for a more friendly system than the forum could offer initially, but again I'll make my point again, I've not seen hide nor hair of him since we moved to XF.


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## ArielMT (Jul 8, 2016)

Catching even one mod online more often than catching all mods offline is the ideal situation and very doable on moderately active forums.  That would reduce response times to the span of a single user report or less.

Speaking of which, at least one of the bots has re-registered since I last posted.


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## Sergei Nóhomo (Jul 8, 2016)

jayhusky said:


> Oh right, well, yeah, might as well revoke the permissions.
> 
> I think honestly, admins MUST be operative on a forum at least twice a week (even if they're just checking in on messages etc), since most boards have an admin CP where they can leave notes for one another, if one is to be away for a while due to exceptional circumstance(s) then that's all fair, but seriously, I think staff should show up here at least 1-2 times a week, just to keep an eye on things.
> 
> ...





ArielMT said:


> Sciggles got the forum admin job at the same time she got the main site admin job, mid-January 2012.  None of us were told, not even Arshes, until the drama was well under way.  She is ill-qualified to moderate a forum, but we barely remember she's a forum admin because she's been completely derelict in that capacity since about Summer 2012, doing nothing but rarely posting as an otherwise-ordinary user.
> 
> 
> While yak remains in FA's inner circle, a state I disagree with ever more passionately, he should be assigned a special forum role like the FA:U staffers here are and relieved of his forum admin role.



You people seem to forget the key thing here. Furries

It's been proven time and time again that majority of furry owned things are either poorly run or are full of bias. Only site I can think of that has a (for the most part) decent staff team is TR but even that place has some shit staff.


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## ArielMT (Jul 8, 2016)

Sergei Nóhomo said:


> You people seem to forget the key thing here. Furries
> 
> It's been proven time and time again that majority of furry owned things are either poorly run or are full of bias. Only site I can think of that has a (for the most part) decent staff team is TR but even that place has some shit staff.



Incompetence and unacceptable bias are not uniquely furry things; you need only look at Dashcon, Reddit, and Facebook to see that.  Nor are they pervasive throughout the entirety of the furry fandom; only one major furry site suffers breaches, data leakage, and vandalism as a matter of course, and only one furry forum suffers an out of control spam problem.


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## jayhusky (Jul 8, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> Speaking of which, at least one of the bots has re-registered since I last posted.


Yeah I saw that too. Oh well, grab a coffee and sit back. Nothing we can do.


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## Sergei Nóhomo (Jul 8, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> Incompetence and unacceptable bias are not uniquely furry things; you need only look at Dashcon, Reddit, and Facebook to see that.  Nor are they pervasive throughout the entirety of the furry fandom; only one major furry site suffers breaches, data leakage, and vandalism as a matter of course, and only one furry forum suffers an out of control spam problem.



While it is definitely prevalent in other sites it's highly known to be spread through out the majority of furry-owned shit than anything else save for brony stuff, but we don't talk about those "things"


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## Kellan Meig'h (Jul 8, 2016)

the boards that I'm an Admin on, I'm there every day. They're good places to be for the users that inhabit them and I do keep spam/seo and shitposting off the board. I'm not afraid to IP ban, either.

This place suffers from inattention of the admin/mod staff. Nothing will change until we get a gutsy mod/admin that will IP ban these spammers.

Until this happens, FAF will continue to die a slow death.


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## Sergei Nóhomo (Jul 8, 2016)

Kellan Meig'h said:


> the boards that I'm an Admin on, I'm there every day. They're good places to be for the users that inhabit them and I do keep spam/seo and shitposting off the board. I'm not afraid to IP ban, either.
> 
> This place suffers from inattention of the admin/mod staff. Nothing will change until we get a gutsy mod/admin that will IP ban these spammers.
> 
> Until this happens, FAF will continue to die a slow death.



IP banning would be pointless considering any spammer worth their salt would just use a VPN/proxy


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## Kellan Meig'h (Jul 8, 2016)

Sergei Nóhomo said:


> IP banning would be pointless considering any spammer worth their salt would just use a VPN/proxy



Ninety-nine percent of spammers don't use a proxy. That's a statement made from years of experience. That one percent left over would be caught by new member approval. I automatically reject new members that sign up in a language other than English or those that fail the "I'm Human" test. They also have a bad habit of trying to fill out all blank areas in a new member page. Including that blank area that asks for no input.


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## Sergei Nóhomo (Jul 8, 2016)

Kellan Meig'h said:


> Ninety-nine percent of spammers don't use a proxy. That's a statement made from years of experience. That one percent left over would be caught by new member approval. I automatically reject new members that sign up in a language other than English or those that fail the "I'm Human" test. They also have a bad habit of trying to fill out all blank areas in a new member page. Including that blank area that asks for no input.



Wow that's some shit stuff right there. Like fuck, when I wanna mess with F4L even I use a VPN.

Guess you're lucky these are some shit spambots


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## ArielMT (Jul 8, 2016)

Sergei Nóhomo said:


> Wow that's some shit stuff right there. Like fuck, when I wanna mess with F4L even I use a VPN.
> 
> Guess you're lucky these are some shit spambots


When I was a mod here and able to see spammer IP addresses, they almost always belonged to business and residential services in southern Asia, not any VPN services.  That said, I obviously can't know where the Korean bots are spamming from.


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## Sergei Nóhomo (Jul 8, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> When I was a mod here and able to see spammer IP addresses, they almost always belonged to business and residential services in southern Asia, not any VPN services.  That said, I obviously can't know where the Korean bots are spamming from.



Sounds about right


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## Kellan Meig'h (Jul 8, 2016)

Sergei Nóhomo said:


> Wow that's some shit stuff right there. Like fuck, when I wanna mess with F4L even I use a VPN.
> 
> Guess you're lucky these are some shit spambots



Whether you wish to believe it or not, that's how it rolls. These Korean Spam jokers are probably doing this from work, when the boss isn't looking. I would almost bet there's no VPN in play here.

This is what happens when new members aren't placed under moderator approval. That won't happen here because the management doesn't seem to care a bit. Approval would require someone to visit the board at least once a day. That, my friend, won't happen.

BTW, I am pretty sure I have banned a VPN at one time or another. Weird IP addresses that don't pan out on a whois.


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## Sergei Nóhomo (Jul 8, 2016)

Kellan Meig'h said:


> Whether you wish to believe it or not, that's how it rolls. These Korean Spam jokers are probably doing this from work, when the boss isn't looking. I would almost bet there's no VPN in play here.
> 
> This is what happens when new members aren't placed under moderator approval. That won't happen here because the management doesn't seem to care a bit. Approval would require someone to visit the board at least once a day. That, my friend, won't happen.
> 
> BTW, I am pretty sure I have banned a VPN at one time or another. Weird IP addresses that don't pan out on a whois.



Certain ones with locations in North America are nigh-indistinguishable


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## MEDS (Jul 8, 2016)

If one needs help, I'm willing to help clean up spam. I plan on sticking around for a while. I hate advertisements.


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## Darklordbambi (Jul 9, 2016)

Someone needs to stop North Korea, or at least let us make shitpost chats until the Korea Spam stops :U I feel as if they added a chatbox at the top or had a thread for general chatting and shitposting, it'd make things a helluva lot less stressful when the spam did come.

Also I know the mods are all 'we haves lives' and such, and I get that, it's just most forums this active have a bigger team on board for this very reason. No forum with a userbase this big should be plagued with spam this frequently with such length. I get that cleaning up the spam must be a bitch, but honestly I think this forum suffers from being understaffed for how much activity comes into here, what with this being the official forums of Fur Affinity. More resources into security for account creation might be the best avenue to keep the spam down.


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## ArielMT (Jul 9, 2016)

There's nothing you can do but report and wait, and wait, and wait some more.  The forum admins in charge seem content to let spammers register and post at their leisure and leaving it to their tier-1 grunts to discover and clean up the mess the long way.


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## Darklordbambi (Jul 9, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> There's nothing you can do but report and wait, and wait, and wait some more.  The forum admins in charge seem content to let spammers register and post at their leisure and leaving it to their tier-1 grunts to discover and clean up the mess the long way.


Id personally go on an informal 'strike' by allowing a general chat/shitposting room for when the spammers come in and let the forum go to total chaos until the admins have to do something :U I mean I don't think you have any legal obligation to to moderate, as a 'tier 1 grunt', right? Why work a job for people who seem to leave all the the work to you if you don't even get paid? Unless you're legally required to, I'd think it'd be not only tempting but ideal to just throw up the clipboard and say 'fuck it' until the people who gave you those powers actually do something? Otherwise this place pretty much just North Korean Spam raids people have to clean up over and over and over. Thanks alot Kim Jong Un.


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## Kellan Meig'h (Jul 9, 2016)

Sergei Nóhomo said:


> Certain ones with locations in North America are nigh-indistinguishable



That's what I'm talking about. An IP that might trace back to a server "somewhere" but doesn't quite resolve in a Whois. That, or an IP that cannot be resolved at all. That is a clear sign of a VPN. Like it or not, when you log in, the board software logs an IP, be it yours or VPN. I keep a log on my sites of these weird IP addresses. When I get a second spammer using that general IP range, I do a slightly wider IP ban.


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## ArielMT (Jul 10, 2016)

Darklordbambi said:


> Id personally go on an informal 'strike' by allowing a general chat/shitposting room for when the spammers come in and let the forum go to total chaos until the admins have to do something :U I mean I don't think you have any legal obligation to to moderate, as a 'tier 1 grunt', right? Why work a job for people who seem to leave all the the work to you if you don't even get paid? Unless you're legally required to, I'd think it'd be not only tempting but ideal to just throw up the clipboard and say 'fuck it' until the people who gave you those powers actually do something? Otherwise this place pretty much just North Korean Spam raids people have to clean up over and over and over. Thanks alot Kim Jong Un.



Actually, we're only 40 days away from the anniversary of FAF's great fuck-it, the day when every active mod and the only active admin resigned in protest of how FA's senior administration treated FAF staff.


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## jayhusky (Jul 10, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> Actually, we're only 40 days away from the anniversary of FAF's great fuck-it, the day when every active mod and the only active admin resigned in protest of how FA's senior administration treated FAF staff.



Somehow I don't quite see a recurrence happening, but I didn't realise it was that soon.


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## quoting_mungo (Jul 10, 2016)

Darklordbambi said:


> Id personally go on an informal 'strike' by allowing a general chat/shitposting room for when the spammers come in and let the forum go to total chaos until the admins have to do something :U I mean I don't think you have any legal obligation to to moderate, as a 'tier 1 grunt', right? Why work a job for people who seem to leave all the the work to you if you don't even get paid?


Yes, excellent idea, protest something out of the management's control by creating more work for yourself. That will surely not backfire. :V

"Legal obligation" has sod-all to do with why most people do any kind of volunteer work. Permitting things to devolve into chaos will only hurt the posters who actually wish to have productive discussions, or who need help with legitimate issues which get neglected because staff are too busy trying to herd shitposting anar-cats. On mainsite, I am an administrator. On forums, I'm pretty much a "tier 1 grunt", albeit one with plenty of mainsite experience. I'm not paid, nor do I expect to be, because signing on as a volunteer does not normally come with a paycheck.

We get that the spambots are a PitA. We deal with them as soon as we can. Suggesting some kind of misguided rebellion isn't going to help with that.


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## Sergei Nóhomo (Jul 10, 2016)

quoting_mungo said:


> Yes, excellent idea, protest something out of the management's control by creating more work for yourself. That will surely not backfire. :V
> 
> "Legal obligation" has sod-all to do with why most people do any kind of volunteer work. Permitting things to devolve into chaos will only hurt the posters who actually wish to have productive discussions, or who need help with legitimate issues which get neglected because staff are too busy trying to herd shitposting anar-cats. On mainsite, I am an administrator. On forums, I'm pretty much a "tier 1 grunt", albeit one with plenty of mainsite experience. I'm not paid, nor do I expect to be, because signing on as a volunteer does not normally come with a paycheck.
> 
> We get that the spambots are a PitA. We deal with them as soon as we can. Suggesting some kind of misguided rebellion isn't going to help with that.



Silly person, any "productive" discussion is killed by people who are afraid of anything even remotely non-furry like politics, civil discussion about religion, etc.

I've tried but majority of people shit their pants and cover their ears while yelling "LALALALALALALALDICKSLALALALALALA"


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## RinkuTheRuffian (Jul 10, 2016)

If a forum doesn't even have a shoutbox, they don't care about you.


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## jayhusky (Jul 10, 2016)

quoting_mungo said:


> On mainsite, I am an administrator. On forums, I'm pretty much a "tier 1 grunt", albeit one with plenty of mainsite experience. I'm not paid, nor do I expect to be, because signing on as a volunteer does not normally come with a paycheck.
> 
> We get that the spambots are a PitA. We deal with them as soon as we can. Suggesting some kind of misguided rebellion isn't going to help with that.



Fair enough, but I think the main beef many are having is the following; (it's not a list, but more of a step by step guide)

Staff positions are advertised
Positions are then filled (Some, NOT all, later turn out to be close friends with former/current staff)
New Staff are "trained"
New Staff either go power-happy or fail to do actual community work.
Return to Step 1
Now I'm not calling anyone out on this, but it _has_ happened, even right the way back in 2007-2008. I remember one former member of staff, gave infraction for the most benign issue I've ever heard of.


Genuinely I would appreciate it, if a member of staff, even yourself, would speak to @Dragoneer and request some more moderators were brought on-board, sure the current mods are doing well, but their staff team is woefully minimal, and if I'm honest, it needs bolstering.

However, a lot of people are withholding their help, as FA enforces an NDA on them if they are staff, due to "sensitive data, such as email addresses and passwords". Personally for me, and this is my two cents on the matter, I feel that if new mods are brought on, then the following should be applied to them.



Mods cannot delete posts, but otherwise remove them to a subforum, invisible to the regular users
Mods cannot see email addresses, IP Addresses or other data that may be considered sensitive, in short, mods can only see information that which a non-logged in or regular user can see.
Mods can flag posts to administrators that break house rules (posting explicit content etc) and administrators can provide action via that method.

With those three above steps, there is genuinely no need for an NDA for "low-level moderators", sure if the user then wished to be escalated to administrative powers, if admins offer the position to them, then yes an NDA should apply, but simply for herding cattle to a pen, it really is overkill in my opinion.


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## Sergei Nóhomo (Jul 10, 2016)

jayhusky said:


> Fair enough, but I think the main beef many are having is the following; (it's not a list, but more of a step by step guide)
> 
> Staff positions are advertised
> Positions are then filled (Some, NOT all, later turn out to be close friends with former/current staff)
> ...



Refer to previous statement regarding "*furries*".

From my experience and that I've seen of many other places, bias like that is _huge_ in the fandom compared to others save for bronies (no one cares or talks about those _things_) and the Chinese cartoons enthusiasts to an extent


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## ArielMT (Jul 10, 2016)

jayhusky said:


> I remember one former member of staff, gave infraction for the most benign issue I've ever heard of.



If it's who I think it is, they ended up being called benfractions.



jayhusky said:


> Mods cannot delete posts, but otherwise remove them to a subforum, invisible to the regular users



Unless SOP was significantly changed since I left, this is already done.  There's a deportation zone where posts and threads are moved, and there's a subforum of that specifically for the unsolicited commercial posting kind of spam.  It works quite well, and it's been there for so long that I can't remember if it ever wasn't during my tenure.

(We're not doing this on the forum I currently moderate because it allows us to hide in place with greater convenience and just as effectively.)


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## jayhusky (Jul 10, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> If it's who I think it is, they ended up being called benfractions.



Nope, Think you might have the wrong one there.




ArielMT said:


> Unless SOP was significantly changed since I left, this is already done.  There's a deportation zone where posts and threads are moved, and there's a subforum of that specifically for the unsolicited commercial posting kind of spam.  It works quite well, and it's been there for so long that I can't remember if it ever wasn't during my tenure.
> 
> (We're not doing this on the forum I currently moderate because it allows us to hide in place with greater convenience and just as effectively.)



Oh, well since I've never been a mod here, I wouldn't have known, but the logic is all there.


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## ArielMT (Jul 10, 2016)

I just noticed y'all are using FunCAPTCHA for registration.  It's probably proving that KittenAuth is not as effective a concept as everyone hyped it up to be.

Even the most challenging of their "games" lets more than 10% of bots sign up if that's the only anti-spam measure you use.  At absolute best for spam prevention, the bots pass on the first go over 11.1% of the time with pure blind guessing.

You're also using a hidden leave-blank field, but you're _not_ using a noscript-compliant verification system, so the spammers have obviously learned their bots need CSS and JavaScript to pass, and the CSS hides the leave-blank field for them.


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## Simo (Jul 11, 2016)

Their names are getting more realistic sounding. Do bots evolve, like this?


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## jayhusky (Jul 11, 2016)

On a side note, has anyone noticed that the "Stay Logged In" feature on these forums doesn't seem to work anymore?

I always have it ticked from my personal machine, and sporadically I get logged out, which in honesty is rather annoying.




ArielMT said:


> I just noticed y'all are using FunCAPTCHA for registration.  It's probably proving that KittenAuth is not as effective a concept as everyone hyped it up to be.
> 
> Even the most challenging of their "games" lets more than 10% of bots sign up if that's the only anti-spam measure you use.  At absolute best for spam prevention, the bots pass on the first go over 11.1% of the time with pure blind guessing.
> 
> You're also using a hidden leave-blank field, but you're _not_ using a noscript-compliant verification system, so the spammers have obviously learned their bots need CSS and JavaScript to pass, and the CSS hides the leave-blank field for them.



I think I'm likely to recommend : AreYouAHuman to @Dragoneer to help stop spambots here.




Simo said:


> Their names are getting more realistic sounding. Do bots evolve, like this?



I'll have to keep an eye out for these better sounding bots, thankfully they show up nice and easy in the "recent posts" column on the homepage.


_*edited to remove broken link_


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## ArielMT (Jul 11, 2016)

jayhusky said:


> I think I'm likely to recommend : AreYouHuman to @Dragoneer to help stop spambots here.



Your link is NXDOMAIN.  If you mean "Are You A Human," it looks no better than FunCAPTCHA, and the company's focus is advertisement targeting, not automated registration prevention.


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## jayhusky (Jul 11, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> Your link is NXDOMAIN.  If you mean "Are You A Human," it looks no better than FunCAPTCHA, and the company's focus is advertisement targeting, not automated registration prevention.



Oops, thanks, updated the above post.

Ok, fair enough they do tend to lean more toward advertisers, but the logic is there, its a harder captcha to fool than a typical "type this" or "rotate" that one?

While on the subject though, what about Sweet Captcha - Free Human Friendly Captcha


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## ArielMT (Jul 11, 2016)

jayhusky said:


> Oops, thanks, updated the above post.
> 
> Ok, fair enough they do tend to lean more toward advertisers, but the logic is there, its a harder captcha to fool than a typical "type this" or "rotate" that one?
> 
> While on the subject though, what about Sweet Captcha - Free Human Friendly Captcha



Same weakness.  Just continuously throwing the first item at the target without bothering to see what I was supposed to match, I got it right on the fourth try.  Edit: The concept of making a captcha that simple a game is fundamentally flawed.  While it allows a human who can read the language to pass on the first try, it allows a bot to pass with a high probability of success as well due to the low number of possible combinations.  For the proposed captchas, the probability of a know-nothing bot passing is 1 in 4.  For the current captcha, it's 1 in 9. Standard captchas give a bot a significantly lower probability of passing, one in several dozen, hundred, or thousand.

What we use is a small pool of easy-to-answer questions (that we change up every so often) and a standard captcha on the sign-up page, and it's done so well in keeping the spammers out without significantly retarding our growth that we've only ever had two spammers get far enough to post, and only one of the two was a bot while posting.  Edit: For context, the forum I'm currently a mod on has grown membership by 12-13% in the last 90 days.


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## jayhusky (Jul 12, 2016)

ArielMT said:


> Same weakness.  Just continuously throwing the first item at the target without bothering to see what I was supposed to match, I got it right on the fourth try.  Edit: The concept of making a captcha that simple a game is fundamentally flawed.  While it allows a human who can read the language to pass on the first try, it allows a bot to pass with a high probability of success as well due to the low number of possible combinations.  For the proposed captchas, the probability of a know-nothing bot passing is 1 in 4.  For the current captcha, it's 1 in 9. Standard captchas give a bot a significantly lower probability of passing, one in several dozen, hundred, or thousand.
> 
> What we use is a small pool of easy-to-answer questions (that we change up every so often) and a standard captcha on the sign-up page, and it's done so well in keeping the spammers out without significantly retarding our growth that we've only ever had two spammers get far enough to post, and only one of the two was a bot while posting.  Edit: For context, the forum I'm currently a mod on has grown membership by 12-13% in the last 90 days.



Ok , fair enough. Even if we ditch the captcha idea, FA could still theoretically block bots through other means.


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