Spam Reduction Idea

[Donoroto]

The vast majority of forum spam are attempts to get us to follow a link to somewhere. And spammers only use trial memberships.

I suggest removing the ability to post an active hyperlink for all trial members.

 

[Sunfire96]

The vast majority of forum spam are attempts to get us to follow a link to somewhere. And spammers only use trial memberships.

I suggest removing the ability to post an active hyperlink for all trial members.

Not a bad idea, but how would a new user post a recipe link for us to help them with?

 

[Pricelessbrewing]

Not a bad idea, but how would a new user post a recipe link for us to help them with?

Agreed, I would not want to limit all trial users from being able to link to any site in totality. We could perhaps place a rule that new users within X time frame can only create posts with links outside of brewers friend after Y number of replies or something like that.

 

[Donoroto]

Not a bad idea, but how would a new user post a recipe link for us to help them with?

Just post the plain text of the URL. Not a link, we'd have to copy & paste to see anything.

 

[Donoroto]

Agreed, I would not want to limit all trial users from being able to link to any site in totality. We could perhaps place a rule that new users within X time frame can only create posts with links outside of brewers friend after Y number of replies or something like that.

Spammers know to create ten or xx bogus posts to gain permissions for links. Maybe just time-based, not until 15 days for example. If BF links can be available from the start but external links suppressed that would be pretty good.

 

[Sunfire96]

Agreed, I would not want to limit all trial users from being able to link to any site in totality. We could perhaps place a rule that new users within X time frame can only create posts with links outside of brewers friend after Y number of replies or something like that.

I like that, can only post internal links initially

 

[Zambi]

Not sure...
Not every trial member is automatically a spammer.
Compared with some other sites I'm on, brewersfriend is not doing too bad. There seem sudden peaks and then it quietens down again

 

[Minbari]

I have been part of many forums that had a "reply only" rule for the first 10 posts. so you cant start your own thread until you meet that threshhold. most spam posts here seem to be bots that want to post non-sense

 

[Donoroto]

As @Zambezi Special noted, it is not a huge problem here. But it is nonzero as well.

 

[Sunfire96]

As @Zambezi Special noted, it is not a huge problem here. But it is nonzero as well.

Definitely nonzero. And seems much worse lately

 

[Nosybear]

Just post the plain text of the URL. Not a link, we'd have to copy & paste to see anything.

I like this idea. That way we can look for weird URLs at least.