general wishes-no more

[Stephen Dolbee]

This section used to be one of my favorites to see what people were wanting in future versions. Now, it is only for those that want to see Paris or Britney pics (which I don't). My wish is for GS to figure out a way to get rid of these spammers-actually, to keep them off in the first place.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Rest assured, that the overall moderator, Djordje, and yours truly (moderator for a couple of forums) have been in regular contact with GS over many months about this issue.

GS is doing their best to fine tune various filtering mechanism to stop these posts.

I requested that posts containing more than 'x' URL references be put in the 'moderator review' corner. Defining 'x' was a problem and the forum administrator did not want to constrain real users.

Similarly, I requested that inline images (you know who and what!) be prohibited, but again, the administrator felt that that would constrain normal users.

We've been seeing how the filters and these things work for a while to review. I still lean towards the restrictions above.

Djordje and I ban and remove spam posts as quickly as we see them. Being about 10 time zones apart lets us cover things reasonably well, but of course it depends on how often we log on and if we are available that day. They come in spurts. We had almost none for several weeks, and then for the past week, I've been purging about 5 each day that make it through the filters. A waste of my time...which is all donated anyway. 😞

So, rest assured, people at GS are aware of the issue, have and are working on it, and your moderators are doing their best to delete these things when we see them in order to keep this a professional forum that reflects well on all of us as well as GS.

Cheers,
Karl

[TomWaltz]

I try to ban these posts when I see them as well.

I disagree about inline images. They are much better than making people download them to look at them.

[Karl Ottenstein]

TomWaltz wrote:
I try to ban these posts when I see them as well.

I disagree about inline images. They are much better than making people download them to look at them.

Sorry, Tom - I should have mentioned that Tom and a few others have 'ban' capability.

Well, the problem I have with inline images is that they come from ANY external URL on the web. As far as I have seen for some months, the only inline images have been in the spam posts. Most regular users use attachments - which generate preview images that are often large enough to view without the extra download click. The inline images can be of any size (bytes, not pixels)...and so for our many users internationally on dial-up, can slow down their forum viewing dramatically.

Cheers,
Karl

[Stephen Dolbee]

Thanks, guys! I couldn't help saying something. This forum is a great resource and I have learned alot-and expect to continue.

Steve

[Greg Kmethy]

We could improve, but to every message that appears here there are 10 other that does not get trough in the first place. We will try to implement the less-then "x" links allowed filter