asked
[meta] Spam
It seems like a spam started to appear on this pages. Thanks to @ThomasRushton who took a care and removed about 50 spam replies. Are there some mechanisms implemented to avoid spam? Probably at least captha could be implemented on the sign-up page. It is possible in OSQA? Any other suggestion how to avoid spam on these pages?
First up, big thanks to @ThomasRushton who not only raised the 'alarm' this morning, but also did a splendid job to reverse the effect of the spammer today. There are a few settings that could be used here. 1. Email validation - the site can prevent users from contributing until they have validated the email adddress used in their registration - this is currently turned off 2. Captcha can be used for adding any content where the karma rep is below a certain level - currently set at 0, and all new users start at 1 The problem is that any automated methods of preventing spam will inevitably give more barriers-to-entry for new and low-rep users, and it was probably a concious decision to remove them in an attempt to grow the site. To be fair we haven't had that much spam in the (almost) 2 years that this site has been up, and whilst today's influx was particularly bad, it didn't take too long to get it sorted once the alarm had been raised. It probably took longer than normal as it is a Saturday, and not a normal working day. However, you are right, maybe we should now be thinking about this and I'm sure that we will have conversations about the issue today, the current site settings and the way forward.
Would email validation still occur if OpenID is used? I would be in favor of adding some type of security code feature or something, the little box that says type in the characters dispalyed. I doubt most users would have an issue doing that to gain access to the info that is provided on this site. It would also be more convient than having to wait to receive an email to validate my registration.
Thanks to @ThomasRushton. But in general I agree with Kev that spam does not seem to be a big problem here (yet) and I would be reluctant to add any barriers to entry for new users.
I'm glad to see that the links in the spam messages were stripped out by the mailer, so at least they didn't get out...
