Post Moderation

Posted by kevin_saunders on 04-Aug-2009 04:38

Would it be possible to force people who have less than 10 posts to be moderated before their post appears on the boards? This will eliminate the SPAM that has started to plague the boards recently.

As an example, this user:

http://communities.progress.com/pcom/people/clickinternet

has posted 7 times - based on his username it is always going to be spam. Why has his account not been deleted??

If there is no resource in PSC for this job, why not promote some of the users of this board (Thomas M-H, Mike F, etc) - people that are known and respected in the Progress community..

All Replies

Posted by Admin on 04-Aug-2009 06:29

Hi Kevin, thanks for the trustful words!

kevin_saunders schrieb:

Would it be possible to force people who have less than 10 posts to be moderated before their post appears on the boards?

Another option for "first time posters" might be a check for serial number and control code or invitation from an existing user. That would keep the barrier for first-time-posters lower while still increasing the barrier for spammers.

This will eliminate the SPAM that has started to plague the boards recently.

As an example, this user:

http://communities.progress.com/pcom/people/clickinternet

has posted 7 times - based on his username it is always going to be spam.

That's really anoying!

If there is no resource in PSC for this job, why not promote some of the users of this board (Thomas M-H, Mike F, etc) - people that are known and respected in the Progress community..

I'm pretty sure many others are also open to participate to keep PSDN a clean environment! But I think community support in this area should go hand in hand with more infleunce on the direction of the forum.

Right now Progress Communities mostly looks pretty much left alone.

Posted by kevin_saunders on 04-Aug-2009 07:23

Hi Mike,

Those that participate and contribute the most to the community deserve recognition..

I'm against the serial/number control code idea, because some contractors do not have their own products, and so might never come round to participating (and might not want to use their client's codes either).. Personal invitation might be an option for someone not to be moderated until they have the set number of posts, however.

I am sure there are many people who would be willing to help out, and being as this is a 'Community' place, the community should be the ones to police it. But, I don't see PSC being willing to just turn it all over at once, considering the investment they hacve put into it. Eventually, however, the community should govern the (our?) community. Of course, those areas that are Partner only or Staff only must remain under PSC control, but the general areas should have much more community involvement or the only posts will be spam and the regular contributors will move to pastures greener.

Posted by ChUIMonster on 04-Aug-2009 10:19

I agree that requiring a serial # is a very bad idea.

Some sort of self-policing ability would be much, much better.

I like the idea of the first X posts being gated but it would only work if the software supports it -- and the track record there isn't good.  Plus it would need to be something that occurs fairly quickly or it would become a barrier to legitimate user participation.

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 04-Aug-2009 11:35

Merely adding a button to report a post as spam would be a big help ... *if* some action was then taken.  I have individually reported each of these spam posts and not only have they not been deleted, but the user isn't even blocked yet.  Ridiculous.

Posted by kevin_saunders on 05-Aug-2009 03:13

Which is exactly the reason I believe the community should be policing the forums. At the moment, PSC do not have a single resource for binning spam and getting rid of fake users. Admittedly the problem is small at the moment, but still very annoying considering this is a professional board..

In response to Tom's post about the speed that posts should be approved, I agree and having community moderators in different timezones would go a long way to alleviate the potential issue..

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 05-Aug-2009 11:24

Frankly, I see no need for moderation.  We just need someone to notice and delete the spam and block the user.  Isn't it the case that since we moved to the new software there has been a total of 7 spam messages ... everyone of which is from the same user!

Posted by ChUIMonster on 05-Aug-2009 12:01

That's pretty much what moderation is.  Nobody is saying that it's a full time job for a staff of 12.  But it's quite clear that a staff of 0 is inadequate.  So delegate some authority to the users.  Simple and effective.

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 05-Aug-2009 12:36

Moderation to me means having to have a post approved before it is posted.  I don't think we need that.  We just need some cleanup ... and, of course, action on the many other issues which have been proposed or noted.

Posted by Rob Straight on 06-Aug-2009 14:53

Progress also has a vested interest in curbing anti-social behavior on PSDN like spamming, and while the response may have been a little slow, the specific incident has been resolved (user blocked and posts deleted).

     Rob

This thread is closed