NEW POLICY: Deleting 0-post users

Mead, wine, beer, and any other form of alcoholic beverages, as well as vinegar.

Moderator: Christopher Weeks

NEW POLICY: Deleting 0-post users

Postby Christopher Weeks on Wed Feb 28, 2018 9:21 am

Hi all. It has just recently come to my attention that not only are spam accounts joining up and posting spam in the intro board, but they are also not posting at all and spamming y'all through PM. As a result, we have a new policy that I will be be periodically deleting accounts with 0 posts. This won't be perfect because I don't want to delete new accounts in case they just haven't got around to posting their intro, so bad actors will still have a window in which they can work. But when I started looking into it, I found several thousand accounts with no posts and it seems like kind of a hole.

But I also want to give things a couple of weeks so that any of you can weigh in. Is there anything I'm missing? Is there any reason I should not delete these user accounts?

Also, I'm going to investigate turning off PM access to new users before I've approved them, but we occasionally get new members who have trouble finding the introductions board and they PM me for help, so that's not a perfect plan from the standpoint of trying to be welcoming and inclusive.

Please let me know your thoughts below if you have anything related to these matters.
Christopher Weeks
Nuka Ninja
 
Posts: 2602
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2010 3:59 pm
Location: Carlton County, MN

Re: NEW POLICY: Deleting 0-post users

Postby baerdric on Tue Mar 20, 2018 5:39 pm

It's always hard to keep out bots and spammers. Every solution is a tradeoff between being effective, and making people angry.

Short of building your own AI anti-Spam-bot, I think a zero post rule is a good idea, but can you send out a warning and only delete those who don't respond?
Currently looking at things and pondering about stuff.

Bill DeWitt
baerdric
 
Posts: 113
Joined: Sun Mar 18, 2018 9:00 am

Re: NEW POLICY: Deleting 0-post users

Postby Christopher Weeks on Wed Mar 21, 2018 7:24 am

That would not be easy at the scale we're talking about. Also, we need to be careful about the amount of email the board sends out so that it isn't globally categorized as a source of spam.
Christopher Weeks
Nuka Ninja
 
Posts: 2602
Joined: Tue Oct 12, 2010 3:59 pm
Location: Carlton County, MN


Return to Alcohol Ferments

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 7 guests