Comicgenesis in Spam Apocalypse?

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Buster, I was honestly just thinking of reviving this thread myself.

I want to help, but I don't know how, other than going to the spammer profiles and reporting all of their posts yes it is time consuming, no i don't have anything better to do

Does reporting all of these posts even help at all? Or is it better to just report one per thread, or one per spammer? Who is in charge of deleting/moving the posts, just certain mods?

It's kind of depressing to go to "New Posts" and I can't even figure out which of the established threads have actually been posted in by a real forum member.

[Killbert-Robby]

As far as I know, reporting alerts the admins/mods that there's trouble (... it sends an email or summing? I'd hope its an alert external to these forums at least), but really the second one of them peeks in here the problem would be fairly obvious
Just, you know, there's nobody here

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Just, you know, there's nobody here

That's what it basically comes down to, isn't it? Those who are here can't do much, and those who can do much aren't here.

Except McDuffies, and I forget who else has great power and responsibility.

Edited, just went and checked the list of forum members. If you look at the most recent ten pages, over 200 members have joined in the past 3 days, and almost all of them are spammers. There's got to be a better way to go about solving this problem.

[Killbert-Robby]

Except McDuffies, and I forget who else has great power and responsibility.
There's got to be a better way to go about solving this problem.

Seems to go hand in hand really. Used to be that a mod would at least, you know, check in during the morning, another in the afternoon, etc, even if it just unintentional moderating from them doing their regular posting. But with just one active mod, if he doesn't log in one day its the Wild West out here.

Personally, what I think we need is 1-3 of the more active posters to finally be dragged into mod-dom so even if we don't prevent the spam, we can at least get rid of it within a day. I've been here 5 years and I think I have vague memories of one mod being inducted.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

I'd love to help out if I could. During the summer, I'm in here several times a day, and even during the school year I'm usually on at least once a day.

Though I am a relative noob compared to a lot of the people here, so I understand if it'd be weird for me to have moderator privileges. It's just that the spam has become quite overwhelming in the past few days- I know it'll eventually slow down again, but it's kind of awkward when I go to check in with a running thread on the family computer and suddenly I have a girl taking it in the ass right in the middle of the screen.

[Killbert-Robby]

I don't think how long you've stayed here trumps your attitude and general everyone-likes-you-ness.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Lol, thanks Well, if the powers that be want to let me in on the action, even if it's just temporary to deal with the spamwave, I'm here if I'm needed.

[McDuffies]

I'm currently the only active member who has (partial) moderator admin privileges, which means that I'm the only one that can ban, the only one that can delete one user's posts across the board, and the only active member who can delete posts in some of other forums ("Help, for instance"). Ahaugen and Phil are the only active moderators on this board, since they have to delete posts one by one it's a drag to do it when there's a full page of spam. Naturally, those kinds of things always happen when I'm away for a couple of days.

I think that this forum definitely needs more moderators. I would also like if it had more active posters with partial admin powers like mine. Every single visit consists of a few minutes of posting and twice as much minutes of deleting posts and banning IPs. While other moderators delete messages in GD, I still have to regularly check all other forums, most of which always have at least one or two new spam messages. It's pretty much sucked all the fun out of visiting here.
I think Cuddly would make a great admin. Also, more mods. It'd certainly take a load off my back. Someone with twitter account has to bother main admins about this.

Of course it would be preferable if there was a permanent solution for spam. It's been months and flow of spambots hasn't dried up a single bit and banning IPs does nothing.

Edit: Cuddly, you've been around for years now.

Edit edit: Reports are useful when they point, for instance, to a post burried in the thread or a forum. Like if the thread has been replied to after the spam post, I might miss it. If there's a flood of posts, there's no use in flagging all of them, or, well, any.

[Phact0rri]

I have global Modding too, and even on days I'm pretty busy and can't actually post in here (IE a lot of the time lately) I pop in and check for reports and delete things that need to be taken care of. I really think everyone who are issuing reports are rockstars, and helps out a lot.

I wish I could be more active and stuff, and I try. Hopefully when I'm not deligating between the job I'm quitting (trying to wrap up everything), and the new job I'm starting I'll get some time to breathe and pester people again.

[Laemkral]

I wouldn't mind helping out as a mod. I don't quite want the responsibility that goes with being an admin, but I tend to frequently check in at all hours of the day on my iPad. If theres a bit of spam, I can nab it to help keep it to a minimum.

[Warren]

I just want money. And chicks.

So if being an admin gets me that, sign me up.

[Dragonkingdoms]

I guess the spammers are still at it. No one wants this stupid fish oil, or phentermine or XXX shots of your third inbred cousin! Looks like Dragonkingdoms is going to have to join the fray to stop them!

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

isit just me or has it gotten considerably worse

is it the holidays? are the people behind the madness home from work for a while and now have more time to hone this craft?

[Phact0rri]

its like a couple bots, that are doing most of the damage from what I've been deleting.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Gotcha.

I just had been looking at the "Who's online" thing earlier and there was something like 29 guests, at least three or four of which were registering accounts, which, well, you know. I don't think they were really signing up to discuss webcomics.

[Brockway]

Comic drawing takes alot of work Cornpone and and Phatc. I thought the update to forum what.ever would fix it but there seem to be problems beyond phb. People who need to be online are the problems. Oldbies like YeahDuff and McDuffies are doing their best but we need more users to keep up with the spam. It annoys me but the list of people capable are reduced per the definition. There are current users who are active enough to take up the call.

[Mastermind]

I've seen some polack spam advertising shit in my town. I could go and TP those places if that helps...

[Phact0rri]

Comic drawing takes alot of work Cornpone and and Phatc. I thought the update to forum what.ever would fix it but there seem to be problems beyond phb. People who need to be online are the problems. Oldbies like YeahDuff and McDuffies are doing their best but we need more users to keep up with the spam. It annoys me but the list of people capable are reduced per the definition. There are current users who are active enough to take up the call.

The phb was updated a few years ago. BTW Brock, I'm a mod, and really I think its just me and McD who deletes and cleans up the forums. and we do a well enough job. most everything is removed within 24 hours from what I can tell.

[McDuffies]

GD may be ok, but minutes after you've deleted spam, it's there again. Deleting users and banning ip's is equally ineffective, what I do hasn't the least effect on decreasing the flood. I'm terribly depressed about the state of this forum, it's giving me responsibility that I don't need in my life, it's wasting my time repeating actions that have no effect whatsoever, and those who have any kind of power here aren't bothered by that. Owners probably don't even remember they have this forum anymore.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

One thing I was thinking of, and I honestly have no idea of the logistics of doing this, would be to just unofficially move over to another forum. I'm sure that'd be expensive though and probably a million other problems, not the least of which would be leaving all of the posts here behind and having to constantly link back to them whenever somebody asked a question that had already been addressed.

Plus it'd be really freaking sad for oldbies absent for a while coming back to see the place literally deserted- even if there was a post put up about "We've moved," maybe some wouldn't see it, and we'd lose more potential users.

It's also nice that this one has an actual association with the site where many of our comics are still hosted.

Since from what I recall, it is helpful to report spam posts/posters, I'll try and do that more often myself to make it easier on you guys. I know I was doing that over the summer but somewhere along the line I stopped. Hopefully that will help somehow, even though like you said, McD, it is only temporary.