Thanks for the brainstorming.

I just wanted to let y'all know that the part of the spam problem that y'all see is actually a pretty small part and so many of your suggestions are unlikely to be implemented because of that.

Last time I checked, we were successfully blocking hundreds (maybe thousands) of spam posting attempts most days. (I'm not sure why people continue attempts at that volume when they aren't working, but spammers certainly often demonstrate a lack of common sense to go along with their lack of common decency.)

The spam blocking tools were rather hastily thrown together and they certainly show it, but they also have proven quite effective with only occasional tweaks.

But I'm extremely reluctant to talk about spam blocking techniques in even minor details in public. This is a continual "arms race" and showing "our hand" seems an extremely bad idea to me.

The latest onslaught just requires some more tweaks. Corion has already made some tweaks and I've discussed other tweaks that I've been contemplating (and not just related to spam).

Unfortunately, I've been largely burnt out the last month and have spent very little time actually writing code except at my day job. But that has always ebbed and flowed so I expect to be contributing more soon.

Based on patterns already observed, I do not foresee CAPTCHA being a particularly effective addition. I do foresee upcoming restrictions on how frequently anybody can post with some limits influenced by our voting/experience system.

The goal is to have members in good standing be extremely unlikely to even notice the new restrictions, have legitimate new members and anonymous visitors be able to reasonably contribute, and also greatly reducing the potential impact of the fairly infrequent onslaughts of abuse (and also completely blocking certain types of abuse).

- tye        

In reply to Re: The recent spam wave (iceberg) by tye
in thread The recent spam wave by metaperl

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