Welcome cowardlyduck to the moderator team!

neptronix

Administrator
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Jun 15, 2010
Messages
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Location
Utah, USA
Just wanted to give cowardlyduck a shout out for joining the moderator team. Great guy to have on board :es:
 
BTW don't be an overachiever in learning our moderator system. We're real close to switching to Xenforo... which has dramatically better moderation tools.
 
nicobie said:
Yep! Good job catching all that spam the other day. It's useful to have a Mod in the southern hemisphere to catch problems that happen in the middle of the night for us living up north. 👍

Welcome Cowardly - from the worst place on earth.

Purely out of morbid curiosity - what type of spam did the cretins attempt to post?
 
Oh wow, just noticed this, Thanks!

Redsea Rider said:
Purely out of morbid curiosity - what type of spam did the cretins attempt to post?
Well it was obviously spam, but the AI they're using does appear to be improving. I reckon it's only a matter of time before AI spam is going to be way too time consuming to distinguish from real posters that happen to be including links.
At that point we may need to consider only allowing members with a certain post count or other reputation index to be able to include links or URLs.

Cheers
 
I also think that's a good idea. However is it even possible to do with this forum software? Maybe when we get the new one we can add it.

Don't like the reputation thing if it's like facebook's "like this post" button. 👎

I also suggest that "for sale" threads should be restricted to people that have a minimum number of posts (like 30 or so) and have been on the forum at least a month.
 
Xenforo has some really cool spam control features in it. Looks like top of the line stuff. Removing spam will be less of the moderator team's job in the future :)
 
neptronix said:
Xenforo has some really cool spam control features in it. Looks like top of the line stuff. Removing spam will be less of the moderator team's job in the future :)

Does it have the "slide this graphic over this" graphic puzzle type human detector used on some Chinese?

those seem to be pretty bot proof - at the moment.

If you have to pass the bot test to post a link it should eliminate most of the fluff.

the problem comes from bot solving mills in the 3rd world where the puzzle is solved remotely by a human.

thats pretty much undetectable by automated security.

what I suggest is - lol - a blade runner series of email back and forths with moderators.

A live video chat with a Voight-Kampff test would be even better.

imagine the borderline english speaker suddenly faced with a human moderator and hardball q&a session - lol OMG lets do it!

its a must:

[youtube]0uYB2y3zP-s[/youtube]
 
LOL, i love the idea of a voight-kampff test.

Most captcha systems are compromised ( or will be ), so it's not a good form of security to rely on.. and annoying more often than not.

I have multiple mechanisms planned. Some of them are included in Xenforo, others are thing i add on that work very well on other systems.

I don't want to detail how things will work in public, i can only say that that a base Xenforo install has better protection than a fully tricked out phpbb.
 
neptronix said:
Most captcha systems are compromised ( or will be ), so it's not a good form of security to rely on.. and annoying more often than not.
Yes.

There is a financial aid site I tried to get help from that has a captcha on every page, at least once, and the images that come up are often so grainy I can't tell what they are of, so I can't complete the captcha. Even when I do, someitmes the captcha window won't go away, so I can't click on anything on the page and then it times out (and I can't click on the timeout window for additional time because the completed captcha window is in the way!) The only solution their support had for the problem was to start a new application (after having spent hours over days doing the one I'd already gotten 10 out of 13 pages into and being unable to get any farther). :roll:
 
A few weeks ago i found out about an interesting no-captcha bot preventing technique.. that involves obfuscated fields that trip up most bots. If Xenforo doesn't natively support it, i could patch it on.

I also have a second better idea that i haven't tested yet that would have most botnet operators running screaming from our site. I have a really good and almost proven way to waste their resources since they're wasting ours.

I do believe technologies exist to mostly win the spam war. :)
 
neptronix said:
I do believe technologies exist to mostly win the spam war. :)

Admirable goal.

Looks like the govmnt is thinking about changing website legal accountability/liabilities. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing but it's something we, as forum moderators, need to pay attention to.

I don't feel like being sued just because I've allowed a member to sprew a bunch of shit. I know it's not much of a risk for myself, but I don't want to put Justin at risk either.
 
amberwolf said:
There is a financial aid site I tried to get help from that has a captcha on every page, at least once, and the images that come up are often so grainy I can't tell what they are of, so I can't complete the captcha. Even when I do, someitmes the captcha window won't go away, so I can't click on anything on the page and then it times out (and I can't click on the timeout window for additional time because the completed captcha window is in the way!) The only solution their support had for the problem was to start a new application (after having spent hours over days doing the one I'd already gotten 10 out of 13 pages into and being unable to get any farther). :roll:
I might have a solution for you...depending on how the website is coded. I used a plugin in Firefox called behind the overlay. Very useful to get rid of annoying windows that stay in-front of content until you action them, but don't want to.

neptronix said:
I also have a second better idea that i haven't tested yet that would have most botnet operators running screaming from our site. I have a really good and almost proven way to waste their resources since they're wasting ours.

I do believe technologies exist to mostly win the spam war. :)
Very interested to hear what this is. I work in IT so will probably understand it.

Cheers
 
nicobie said:
Looks like the govmnt is thinking about changing website legal accountability/liabilities. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing but it's something we, as forum moderators, need to pay attention to.

I don't feel like being sued just because I've allowed a member to sprew a bunch of shit. I know it's not much of a risk for myself, but I don't want to put Justin at risk either.

As someone who provides cyber defense to a number of clients that ride the line of Section 230(c)(1) and take in millions of dollars a year ( have a financial stake in engaging in intentionally contentious speech ), i can tell you where that line is, and also that endless sphere is nowhere near that line.

If we were to grow significantly ( like 10 times larger ), we could transfer liability of endless sphere to an appropriate country. If 4chan, stormfront, sci hub, and piratebay can remain on the internet for decades, so can we.

If something changes about Section 230(c)(1), please let me know. But at this point, i have no reason to be concerned about any content that has ever been posted to endless sphere since it's inception.
 
nicobie said:
Good. I would not like this joint to end up like Facebook & Twitter with a bunch of screaming conspiracy wack jobs getting goofy with their keyboards.

Those sorts of environments are created with frequent unfair and unreasonable censorship, an algorithm that quiets certain things and boosts others, and a large crowd to get attention from. It's no surprise why 'acting out' is the norm on such platforms..

A site like facebook or twitter doesn't care about the quality of conversation, they care about volume, because the more you scroll, the more ad space they can sell. So they create an intentionally contentious social environment, looking for that 'volume'.

It's absolutely critical that we don't end up with an environment like that.. that's just doing the human race a disservice, frankly.
 
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