forum member cleanup

[Guest ___]

BTW: I'm on a few forums that if you haven't logged in during the past calender year, your account gets axed. It's not that uncommon of a practice.

[Guest keio6000]

also, don't delete any accounts of users who have obviously railroad-related user names. There's no point in deleting such accounts as they may come back.  REmember, model railroading is s a thing that some people drift in and out of at times in their lives.

[cteno4]

Well to be fair the user name should not come into a decision as many of use have user names that are not train related.

 

Again I don't see what positive thing we get out of culling users, can some one articulate one? Spammers almost always spam the day they register (I know, I usually look at this when I see a spam pop up) and they are popped off as soon as they spam and are reported. Just seems like we are creating a nonexistent problem and work for the mods that gets us nothing in return other than a smaller lot of users and the downside potential of pushing off someone dormant who comes back and their userid is killed.

 

Cheers,

 

Jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

The attachments on JNS aren't viewable unless you're logged in. So the fact that we have a lot of accounts that never posted (not even spam) suggests someone was reading, wanted to see a pic of someone's layout, and created an account to do so. Take, for instance, this user. He signed up four years ago and never posted. But the dude saw fit to upload a profile photo, and from the photo we can see that he's (i) kind of geeky-looking (thus more likely to be a train guy) and (ii) has an asian girlfriend. That guy is our core demographic, right there.

 

Roughly 60% of our accounts fall into this zero-posts category. So if you wanted to "clean up" the members list, rather than deleting accounts for the crime of lurking, you could probably "hack" the members list so it only shows users who've posted at least once or twice. That, then, raises the question of whether you want to reduce functionality for the sake of a cleaner interface. I'd argue that's a bad idea, but then I'm not a Mac guy.

[marknewton]

I agree with Jeff, culling users is just making extra work for the moderators, for no real benefit that I can see.

 

Cheers,

 

Mark.

[cteno4]

What functionality is lost? A long list? When do folks need to scroll thru the list of users? Other than a shorter overall userid list what is the positive benefit to warrant the work and downside?

 

Jeff

[Mudkip Orange]

What functionality is lost? A long list?

 

Heh heh heh... I was arguing that culling or shortening the list reduces functionality. Having it the way it is is more functional.

 

Just so we're absolutely clear here, the preceding was an argument in favor of the do-nothing alternative (or "Option E" if this was an Environmental Impact Study)

[Guest ___]

Since things like this typically fall under Vince's responsibility, I think it would be best if he had any input on said discussion. Frankly, I'd rather have discussions with the team about the spam, since I'm usually the one that ends up cleaning up those messes.

[disturbman]

If we want to act against spammers, I do not think that cleaning up the member base is the best was to do it. Katoftw framed it well: "inactivity is different from

not posting.  if they are logging on and not posting, then fine.  if they ain't logging on.  either they ain't coming back or are/were a spammer."
 

I do not know if it is possible if it is possible, (Martijn will have to confirm or infirm) but the best solution would be perhaps to put new posters under supervision; and by that I mean that their first 10 posts would only be posted after one of us moderators or administrators approved it. I do not think it would deter spammers to try to spam but it would avoid their spams to be visible by you.

On cleaning up, we are quite a small forum and as Jeff noted, this would require a lot of work on our part. It can be done but personally I do not think I will have any time before mid-March as I am bound to Kuala Lumpur and Cape Town for work.

[Mudkip Orange]

I don't even see why you need to have 10 posts. 3 would do it...

[JR 500系]

From pass experience as a Lego forum moderator, the 10 post filtration was something that we practiced, and it worked pretty well. The posts were filtered, and posts with irrelevant content, too short or sales orientated were rejected. Some people would only even post a 'Hi' post 10 times just to get moderated. With this monitoring and filtration, we saw a reduction in the number of spammers and 'scalpers' and did get an increase in the amount of true fans into the forums for fruitful discussions.  

 

The thing is, it IS hard work for the moderators. Having to filter and monitor posts is big work, and takes time to do. Having to balance time on the forums and others is a huge responsibility on the moderators. The new members might get impatient when their monitored posts are not posted after XXX time.  

 

A suggestion, we used to have a thread whereby only new members can post in, and we call it the newbies thread. Those just registered and less than 10 posts cannot post on main stream topics and threads, but they can only read topics and threads, and can only post in the newbies thread. This helped to 'lessen' the job load on the moderators as all the new members are now in one thread. Spams usually occur there and they can be easily cleaned up and dispose off...   

[Densha]

JR500,

Although I see the point of letting users first post in a special thread before they are allowed to post elsewhere on the forums, I don't have good experiences with forums that did so. Personally that feels very restricted to me, and people who are shy or for whatever reason don't want to post in that thread will end up not joining even though in the end they may be 'good' members. I regularly see that lurkers suddenly start posting after a while and it would be bad to scare off those people beforehand.

[katoftw]

monitering the first 10 posts is more work the the current system in place.  and also can be a turn off it those posts aren't accepted quick enough.

 

for the amount of spam we actually get on this site, is isn't worth it.  it is more work than really required.

[cteno4]

The level of spamming seems to be just a few a week currently. This all seems like a lot of work for this. Spams are spotted and reported fast and usually done away with in short order. I could see if we had a dozen a day it would be of concern, but our spam problem seems pretty low still and pretty benign, just get a feeling like we are creating a problem were not much existed.

 

Jeff

[disturbman]

I agree. For me the situation is definitely manageable as it is. I just thought some posters were getting annoyed by the recent level of spamming on the board.

[kvp]

I think a quick fix would be to disallow posting links for new users until their 2nd post or automatically report and quarantine first posts with links in them. This would pretty much get rid of any spam attempts without being noticable for new users. Most new users don't really post external links the first time they post something but almost 100% of spammers do.

[miyakoji]

I'll bet KNpwWFqbzr is deeply interested in Kansai private railways, in particular Kintetsu/Hanshin interlining. :) :) :(

[Guest ___]

I'd rather link posting be disabled for a little more than the first post, maybe five or 10, otherwise, we'll just get a quick bullshit introduction post followed up by the spam.