Spamming members

I am an active member of different forums and sadly some forums fall victim with abusive spams. From a reader's point of view, it is actually quite distressing to be opening forums where threads are already out of control. Usually, spammy threads can mean the demise of the forum.

What is your best technique to control spams out of your forum?

 

Remove it, and ban the user...nice and simple

 

Well first off have staff members do their jobs and moderate. Then remove any spam, and ban the spammer. Spam should never get out of control in the first place if the staff is doing their job correctly.

 

The first thing I would do is ban the user. The second thing I'd do is temporarily close the forum. While the forum is closed, I'd clean up the spam and any posts that quote or reference spam. After all the spam is cleaned up, I'd reopen the board and allow the forum to go back to normal.

The staff may be doing the job correctly for the most part and a spam attack will still take place. The reason: life. Yes, life will get in the way and cause staff members to be offline. During the period at which the staff is offline, a spam attack may take place.

 

Well of course I agree with you on that. Spam will happen regardless of anything, just its the staff job to let it stay under control if you know what I mean.

 

Honestly, if staff can't control spam then they should shutdown their forum especially if they are a new developing forum. I don't allow it and I may not confront anybody directly on the board but I don't mind removing the content and PMing a member.

 

I dont see why they would have to "shutdown" their forum, anyone can recover from it, but its best not to get out of hand in the first place.

 

That is one of the reasons the PH Support board had to go, I was spending more time clearing spam and improving security to try and prevent the attacks from happening, that I had less and less time to actually help members who needed support, etc. it was extremely frustrating waking up to have to read, clear and sort out the spam from the support.

 

Well your host can do just fine without a support forum as its not your main site, but when someone runs a forum as their main site, shutting it down completely because of spam is a stupid decision when there are many things they can do to prevent it.

 

I'm sure it can as it's done perfectly fine since closing it, but I suppose your right if it's just a forum, you shouldn't have to close it down due to spam but if it's getting overboard and you've done all you can, what else can you do, apart from hiring an extra pair of hands or two?

 

Well if someone closed a forum just for spam it goes to show how weak they are, its the same as running a business, you don't close your business as soon as you run into problems or you will never last. You remember how many spam issues we've had here on AdminBB right? Alot but that didnt make us shutdown.

 

No, you made me admin to try and solve it

 

I hired you before we had any spam problems, and right before I left AdminBB for that long break the spam attacks started.

 

This is why I feel a forum should try to hire people from different time zones to reduce the chances of someone not being online.

But, when a spammer attacks the site's I'm on, I first ban the user (especially if it's a human with malicious intent) to avoid them posting more content and then I get to removing the threads.

 

Yea its good to have staff from different time zones, it really does help. Me and Ashley.S. are long hours apart from each other as he lives in the UK, and I live in the US. So he is on in the Mornings in my time, and I am one in the night his time so it does help when one of us is not on.