They've started popping up. I've been deleting them, but it's kind of a pain. I'm trying to think of a solution to this. I think I may be able to force new articles into a moderation queue for approval before they go live. And once a writer has written something that isn't spam, his status can be updated to allow direct posting. How would a setup like that play with everyone?
Spam Articles
(8 posts) (3 voices)-
Fri Oct 26 2007 11:43 pm #
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That makes sense. I know with Yahoo!Groups the only way to control Spam is to put all new posters on moderation, and then approve them if their first post is a clearly legitimate participation in the board.
I've been trying to figure out how to delete the members who make these posts. I'd sort of like to comb through the member list and delete all those weird names that were obviously created by bots or spammers, but I having figured out how to do any of that. That's one reason I've not deleted the last few Spam articles--I want to be able to delete the members (and member profiles), too, because they'll usually have links in them that can be reached through the member directories, and one objective of the bots is to create links from other sites that will be crawled by the search engines.
--M. J. Young
Sat Oct 27 2007 2:21 am # -
Okay, I've set this up. New users are now set to the "contributor" role and require an editor or administrator to approve their articles before they go live. All of you who already have accounts shouldn't be impacted by this, as it's only a change in setting for new users.
Sat Nov 3 2007 11:24 am # -
There was a Spam article when I arrived today (before I saw this thread), which I marked as category Spam and deleted the contents; does that mean I see the Spam articles as if they are approved, or did it get through somehow?
--M. J. Young
Tue Nov 6 2007 1:20 am # -
It's likely the article was posted from an account created before I made the change on how new user accounts are handled. If you see any more of those, you can simply delete them (there's a link at the bottom of the edit article page).
Tue Nov 6 2007 3:42 pm # -
Aaron, is there a way that I can delete authors who exist solely to Spam the articles? I deleted an article by sarxinst (I think that's the spelling), but couldn't see a way to delete him, although this is at least two from him. When I follow the link to author information, I get the list of articles for that author, but nothing more useful.
--M. J. Young
Tue Nov 13 2007 12:40 am # -
Not easily, no. If you email me the name of spam authors as you notice them, I'll delete them. Hopefully, this'll be a temporary thing, since all new accounts need articles approved first, so we're only dealing with older accounts.
Tue Nov 13 2007 12:58 am #
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