What This New Forum Says About Opera ASA
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blackbird71 last edited byI disagree about the spammers. Both Opera forums are/were continually being attacked by spammers, and what I've seen occur in both places are much the same as each other. There were nights (especially) over in the MyOpera forums when 6 or 7 consecutive spams would suddenly pop up in a forum; the blogs were a continual source of problems. In fact, spam appears constantly, and it is usually dealt with quickly here, IMO. Some other forums of which I've been a part have virtually no spam, but they apply very heavy spam filtering, make users jump through more hoops at sign-up, apply Draconian measures if spam is detected from a user, and require a large amount of mod activity - constantly. Those measures have their own costs and issues attached to them (one being that the mods usually have other lives, and the continual spam-purging has to wear thin after a time).
The reality is that there are more spammers out there, especially in certain parts of the world where they're hired heavily to do their deeds because they're cheap, than there are measures and manpower to totally block them. At the end of the day, to paraphrase a slogan from another arena, the price of freedom from spam is eternal vigilance. That requires users to report spam posts immediately as they see them, and it requires constant attention by mods.
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fluxrev last edited by
My impression is that there was considerably less spam on the old forum, but I don't have your history there, so I'll defer to you on that point. My point about the forum format and posting tools still holds, though.
PS Thanks for your post in the other forum regarding this thread being moved, as opposed to its being deleted, which is what I mistakenly thought had happened prior to reading your post.
PPS My apologies to the mods for my other post saying that this post had been inappropriately deleted. I should have known better.
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A Former User last edited by
, you're right.
At least you know what? YouTube compared to this forum is now a total garbage.
And you know what? Unlike here, there it's legal.:yuck: -
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fluxrev last edited by
At least you know what? YouTube compared to this forum is now a total garbage.
"At least" is correct. I would hope that Opera would aspire to a much higher standard for this forum than YT.
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fluxrev last edited by
We mods do our best ...
And it's appreciated, sgunhouse. My point was that Opera ASA has failed to effectively implement spam-reduction measures of the sort that don't require human intervention and consequently has made viewing the thread list on the Windows forum an experience akin to dumpster-diving. The general inferiority of this forum experience compared to the previous one and what that says about Opera ASA's attitude was the main point.
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A Former User last edited by
The forum is infested with spammers. This was not the case in regard to the old Opera forum.
Unfortunately, it was. The old forum had massive waves of spam that nearly destroyed it. There's spam on the new forum as on most forums, but it's mostly dealt with fairly quickly by our mods.has made viewing the thread list on the Windows forum an experience akin to dumpster-diving
I had a look, but couldn't find any spam on that forum. Could you clarify what you are looking at? -
A Former User last edited by admin
My point was that Opera ASA has failed to effectively implement spam-reduction measures of the sort that don't require human intervention and consequently has made...
There's this. Though what about making it selective: eg, for only users with less than 100 posts, huh? (You don't think that obvious spammers would survive a hundred, do you?:)
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fluxrev last edited by
haavard,
Hello. I've been a user (though not continuously) on Opera forums for over ten years and have always appreciated your efforts.Regarding the issue of the amount of spam that appeared on the old Opera forum, I need to say that my observation about it is based on my experience with the Windows desktop forum (only), where I was a daily visitor between May of last year and January of this year, usually several times each day, beginning in the morning and ending in the late evening. So, I have a reasonably good basis upon which to make my observations about the amount of spam that appeared on that particular forum during that period of time. And I stand by my statement that, during that period of time, there was considerably less spam on that forum than I have seen on the new Opera for Windows forum, which I began visiting immediately after it launched, a few months ago.
It has been my experience that the new Opera for Windows forum has one or more spam posts on it almost every time that I visit it. I visited this new Opera for Windows forum daily for a few weeks after it launched and subsequently have visited it only occasionally. However, the fact remains that, measured in percentage terms, I am seeing spam on this forum considerably more frequently than I saw it on the old Windows desktop forum.
Regarding your comment that you did not see any spam on the Opera for Windows forum today, I can assure you that there was at least one on this forum this morning, a post that included the word “sex” in the title. (Would it really be so difficult for Opera ASA to filter for a title like that?) Yesterday there were at least four other spam posts near the top of the thread list when I visited there. If you have any further questions about this, I presume that you could obtain the relevant information from the mods who deleted these spam posts and/or the logs of activity for this forum, which I presume would include this information.
Thank you for your reply and interest.
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A Former User last edited by
during that period of time, there was considerably less spam on that forum than I have seen on the new Opera for Windows forum
There were many more other sub-forums for spammers to abuse back then... -
fluxrev last edited by
Well, haavard, it didn't take long for some more to appear! Here are the titles of two spam threads that are on the Windows forum as I write this:
love vashikaran specialist baba ji +91-9982487292
intercast Love Marriage specialist by V.K baba ji +91-9982487292
Why Opera ASA is not filtering in a way that would automatically prevent this---the two thread titles above have phone numbers and the words "love" and "marriage" in the titles!---I don't understand.
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sgunhouse Moderator Volunteer last edited by
I had a look, but couldn't find any spam on that forum. Could you clarify what you are looking at?
Prior to my post above, I had deleted some 30 spam posts - most in the Opera for Windows forum. I know exactly what he was referring to there ... those "black magic love guru" spammers - or may even be just one under 10 different user names and email addresses - seem to be very active at about midnight my time (0400 GMT), it is a regular thing to see multiple posts by them at that time of day. (I used "Ban user + delete messages" - faster, but it doesn't leave the messages in the logs.)
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A Former User last edited by
My opinion is that, so long as these spam posts are timely handled, it's not an issue of the highest priority to worry about. It doesn't kill the forum, or anything. I guess in the case of this thread, it seems like a matter of personal attitude. My advice is to ignore the occasions - or better help the mods by flagging them. Take your revenge quickly, pal.
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fluxrev last edited by
I appreciate what you're saying, joshl, but why wouldn't Opera ASA configure filters in such a way that new threads whose titles clearly indicate that they are spam never appear in the first place? Why should mods or other forum staff have to waste their time playing Whac-A-Mole with spammers whose thread titles shout "spam"?
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A Former User last edited by
...but why wouldn't Opera ASA configure filters in such a way that new threads whose titles clearly indicate that they are spam never appear in the first place?
It's dangerous in itself - in the first place.
I've no idea if you you do, but I remember the user access problems on MyOpera, caused by automatic filtration of the sort you suggest, flooding the dedicated forum threads with outcries of frustration. I hope this forum won't see such a mistake. Even if we do anything about that, the possibly implemented measures could onle help moderators by autoflagging, or some other more sophisticated subroutines introduced - again avoiding automatic banning as a worst nightmare. -
A Former User last edited by
- If a newly (just right about now) registered user posts a thread containing a link and with the title containing manually preset keywords, the thread goes autoflagged. It is crucial to implement an exceptions lists into such subroutines from the very start.
- Newly registered users could go under additional restrictions. For example, too many threads within a certain time period; maybe the posts time limit could be flexible in this way too; other suggestions? Maybe even to introduce a pending approval for the first few (very few) threads of a newbie? It's debatable: can be applied in dire circumstances... A pro is that if a newbie just registered to get a technical help, the Opera staff are the people who can help most probably, along with approving the thread.
Any other suggestions?
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linuxmint7 last edited by
If a newly (just right about now) registered user posts a thread containing a link and with the title containing manually preset keywords, the thread goes autoflagged. It is crucial to implement an exceptions lists into such subroutines from the very start.
Well first, a lot of recent spammers are starting to create (copy and paste) duplicates of already existing proper topics. Your weather topic was duplicated the other day by a spammer, and they just pasted their spamming rubbish (links, phone numbers etc) at the end of the post.
Newly registered users could go under additional restrictions. For example, too many threads within a certain time period; maybe the posts time limit could be flexible in this way too; other suggestions? Maybe even to introduce a pending approval for the first few (very few) threads of a newbie? It's debatable: can be applied in dire circumstances... A pro is that if a newbie just registered to get a technical help, the Opera staff are the people who can help most probably, along with approving the thread.
There is already a restriction (of sorts) in place, the 60 second restriction and not being able to post for (I think) another 10 minutes ?. The thing is with spammers, they want to post as much of their rubbish as quick as possible, if they get stung (blocked from posting) by a certain restriction because they posted too many times in a certain amount of time, they just create another account.
Any other suggestions?
I personally think it is fine how it currently is, It is still early days yet, and I have only been a mod for a couple of weeks, but I am on here at least twice a day, and I my first priority when visiting is to zap all the spam that I find. Even the cunning and smart spammers have a difficult time hiding from me.
I just zapped one not two minutes before posting this comment. I'm on the case.
EDIT: Another 10 spam posts just gone bye byes.
