You know what I mean. Don't respond to it directly. No one is reading it. "Those people" never come back here to read responses. It's automated. There is no human involved. It's run by a script. When you yell at them, threaten them, call them names... nothing. It's wasted energy. Best not to say ANYTHING with the knowledge that it won't be around long. They don't care and will never see it. It's all done by machines...
... this is Spaminator: The HEYVERN Chronicles™
I remove the account of these useless people as soon as I delete their posts.
If you want to respond to a threads ORIGINAL topic by all means of course that is fine. Just don't make a reference to... the other stuff. Pretend it isn't there (it won't be for long).
When I delete... those things... and you've responded to it... it leaves a gap in the conversation that can appear odd. It could even be misread that someone else is saying something they shouldn't because the offending post is already gone. I end up having to delete an entire series of post that reference the original bad one.
Mainly my point is that spending energy responding is totally wasted. Don't even bother.
Thanks for your help.
-vern
Please don't respond to... unsolicited advertising posts
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synthsin75
- Posts: 10276
- Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2008 11:20 pm
- Location: Oklahoma
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Thanks for the support! Happy to do it. This place would be an absolute mess. You have no idea! I do it as much for myself to be perfectly honest. 
The last one that "got away" ended up with like 25 posts in just a few hours before I nailed it. Deleting the users accounts really seems to slow them down. In the past I could only delete posts and they would keep coming back with more again and again... couldn't keep up.
Now I delete the accounts IMMEDIATELY so they can't keep sending. I think some of them must be signing up multiple accounts because they come in "waves". Groups of two or 3 will hit one after the other as I delete the accounts... then there is few days of breathing space.
This would be a never ending job, an unending battle if I couldn't delete the accounts. Thanks to Mike for giving me access.
-vern
The last one that "got away" ended up with like 25 posts in just a few hours before I nailed it. Deleting the users accounts really seems to slow them down. In the past I could only delete posts and they would keep coming back with more again and again... couldn't keep up.
Now I delete the accounts IMMEDIATELY so they can't keep sending. I think some of them must be signing up multiple accounts because they come in "waves". Groups of two or 3 will hit one after the other as I delete the accounts... then there is few days of breathing space.
This would be a never ending job, an unending battle if I couldn't delete the accounts. Thanks to Mike for giving me access.
-vern
I run several forums and know exactly what you mean. I don't know specifically how Mike handles registration here, but one thing that helped me tremendously was turning on manual approval of accounts.
It's a bit of a PITA, but you can easily tell at a glance what person is "real" by what name and email address they use to register. I typically have around 100 accounts a day to look at, and about 99% of them are spammers I never approve (I hate to say it, but the majority of them are .RU accounts, although .GMAIL is a close second. The cold war hasn't ended in terms of the internet :>).
It's worth asking him if you could do this -- stopping the spam before it happens is far easier than cleaning it up post facto.
It's a bit of a PITA, but you can easily tell at a glance what person is "real" by what name and email address they use to register. I typically have around 100 accounts a day to look at, and about 99% of them are spammers I never approve (I hate to say it, but the majority of them are .RU accounts, although .GMAIL is a close second. The cold war hasn't ended in terms of the internet :>).
It's worth asking him if you could do this -- stopping the spam before it happens is far easier than cleaning it up post facto.
Nothing is 100% sure, but if you let a day or so go by without approval the legitimate folks will email you asking what the problem is... and then you approve them.
Yes, it's a tiny bit more of a PITA to folks coming here for help, but in the long run it's better for everyone. And, as I said, most of the time it's obvious (another good tipoff -- the ID doesn't match the email address. Someone registers as foxyguy with an email as viagrafree@gmail.com is pretty obviously a plant. Someone who uses David at David@gmail.com is more likely to be legit). I can't explain it all, but after a while it becomes pretty second nature and, as I said, worst case scenerio is someone will email and complain and you get them straight.
It's worth a try at least to see -- depending on how many you get coming here per day it might be easy.
Yes, it's a tiny bit more of a PITA to folks coming here for help, but in the long run it's better for everyone. And, as I said, most of the time it's obvious (another good tipoff -- the ID doesn't match the email address. Someone registers as foxyguy with an email as viagrafree@gmail.com is pretty obviously a plant. Someone who uses David at David@gmail.com is more likely to be legit). I can't explain it all, but after a while it becomes pretty second nature and, as I said, worst case scenerio is someone will email and complain and you get them straight.
It's worth a try at least to see -- depending on how many you get coming here per day it might be easy.