Spam

A couple of days ago this forum was totally unreadable for all the spam.

I wouldn't have called that a small amount of spam...!

I would have had the same suggestion as "AmishCake", that is to select moderators around the world to keep these forums clean, but how to avoid abuse by these moderators themselves?

One solution could be pre-moderation, but that would render the edit possibility problematic...

Thank you all for the concern and suggestions. We're doing our best to eliminate this Spam ASAP. For now, the best way to help is to report just one post per spam account you see. That way we ban the user immediately and don't get bogged down with requests for the same account to ban. Thank you for your patience and for being proactive to help.

The problem is that when forum moderation is inactive, the spammers strike heavily.

Subsequently that makes this forum almost unusable.

Thanks for chiming in, Zack! I've just started moderating on a very small forum. I've developed a new appreciation for the work you do.

Apfelwurm wrote:

A couple of days ago this forum was totally unreadable for all the spam.

I wouldn't have called that a small amount of spam...!

Usually for a fairly short period of time. I suspect that it's kind of like trying to turn an aircraft carrier. It doesn't happen in a second.

Wouldn't it be possible to give certain forum users around the world the right to move obnoxious posts into some kind of sin bin?

That post would then remain invisible to the community, until the host's moderators decide to take definitive action on that sin-binned post.

Should a deputy moderator abuse of his/her privileges, the host could simply revoke those privileges, if deemed necessary.

Sounds like a great idea for Feedback.

Personally, I doubt the hosts would trust users not to delete posts that they simply disagree with. I don't think I'd trust myself! They are the judges of what violates the ToU and what doesn't, they don't want us to be.

Meg St._Clair wrote:

Sounds like a great idea for Feedback.

Thank you for your feedback...! 😉

No, those obnoxious posts would not be deleted by the deputy moderators, but simply moved into quarantine, until the real moderators take adequate action on those posts.

stevejobsfan0123 wrote:

Personally, I doubt the hosts would trust users not to delete posts that they simply disagree with. I don't think I'd trust myself! They are the judges of what violates the ToU and what doesn't, they don't want us to be.

There'd be about half the current number of posts in the iPad and iPhone forums if they gave me moderator privileges!

Meg St._Clair wrote:

There'd be about half the current number of posts in the iPad and iPhone forums if they gave me moderator privileges!

Great, you have volunteered to be disqualified from being a moderator!

One down, quite a few others to go...

Apple really could not create a posse with special privileges to temporarily move the spam as it could be construed as employment status. Apple they gave them such tools would be taking responsibility for their actions.

Maybe I just don't visit in the forums you do but I've never seen the forums as unusable.The nice part of the fonts they use is it makes it easy to tune them out.

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deggie wrote:

Maybe I just don't visit in the forums you do but I've never seen the forums as unusable.The nice part of the fonts they use is it makes it easy to tune them out.

This thread was moved from "Using iPad" to where it is now, I was therefore referring to the first forum.

I have the default 30 items per page set for that forum, and a couple of days ago there were only five threads regarding iPad queries on the first page, the rest was spam.

The situation wasn't much better on the other pages, and I checked six pages deep.