[arkayn]

Try using either code or pre. Pre usually works better, but would need to be added to the bbc code options.

Originally Posted by ghporter 

I'm sorry to say that there are no dancing girls, and unfortunately, the "worth the wait" part fell through too. I had thought that there had been some really good "we crushed a spam ring" events to report, but unfortunately we seem to have only scared off a few of them instead. They aren't bothering us, but they're probably bothering others... Oh well, there's always May.

Code:
Results:
Spheric Harlot    3
Ω                 3
Subego            2
Eug               1
SierraDragon      1
Waragainstsleep   1
Total            11

Great work, folks!

P.S.: I've given up on trying to format the results neatly. Between the differences in how the edit box and vBulletin handle spaces and tabs, and my (currently) caffeine deprived brain, I'm just going to let it go.

[Ω]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Omega Man has the most dots.
Does that mean he wins?
Good on him!

w00t! I would like to thank the Lucky Fighter spambot. Without its help I wouldn't be where I am today.

[ghporter]

May results are in!

We're getting better at stopping the spammers at the gates, but a few still slip in through the windows and such. Our wonderfully Public Spirited membership, however, is ever ready to step up and stop these villains. Well done!

Results: Our first tie in a long time!

Spheric Harlot... 4
Subego............. 4
auto_immune..... 1
Big Mac............. 1
BLAZE_MkIV....... 1
Person Man.......... 1
The Final Dakar... 1
turtle777............ 1
Total................... 14

23 reports (several repeat offenders reported - see below), 14 different spammers evaded our nets.

Cherguevara x2
fakess x4
ffhope x4
jayG87 x2
JeremySVilla x2

They're using a combination of brute force and what they think are "sophisticated" approaches. And they're still not able to pollute our forums for very long. Spammers fakess and ffhope got multiple posts up before being stopped, but these looked pretty automated; it was the only way they could get ahead of us, if only for a short time. They were each reported 4 times and fairly quickly zapped into oblivion. Again, good work!

[ghporter]

Wow! I was able to get this done on the first day of the month!

It was a brief month, and the spammers, though they tried, seem to have just not been very clever this time around. There were only 12 member-reported spammers and they were (with one exception) dealt with after only one post. Here's the rundown:

Spheric Harlot ..........7
Subego ..................2
Big Mac ..................1
BLAZE_MkIV ...........1
Rjenkinson ............1
Total .....................12

Way to go folks!

[ghporter]

Folks, with the transition to Huddler, I'm still trying to work out how to collect data on spam reports so I can figure out who reported what and when. It ain't as easy as it used to be, so I apologize for not having the contest stats ready-and probably won't have them ready this weekend.

Sorry again...

[subego]

No apologies necessary, sir!

[Eug]

Some of the subforums are becoming difficult to navigate, because they are being overrun with spam threads, which don't get removed even days later.

eg. There are a bazillion spam threads in the Desktop subforum.

[OreoCookie]

@Eug
Most of the staff have stopped modding, so spam posts and threads are no longer deleted. This is a form of protest on our part. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.

[subego]

Some are getting cleaned up and some aren't.

Is there a rationale?

[P]

There doesn't seem to have been any deletions in a while. I did delete the most annoying ones and more recently removed some links but left the posts, but I haven't done either recently.

[seanc]

Originally Posted by subego 

Some are getting cleaned up and some aren't.
Is there a rationale?

Sometimes the urge to clean-up cannot be overcome...

[shifuimam]

I vote leave it all.

Let this place turn into a spam-infested cesspool where the only person posting anymore is Abe. The powers that be at MacNN HQ have made it clear that they are uninterested in supporting the community that made this place what it is.

Screw 'em.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by seanc 

Sometimes the urge to clean-up cannot be overcome...

I'll let you know when I reach that point.

[andi*pandi]

Trying to read threads in here now is similar to trying to walk through a disreputable bar bathroom at closing time without getting your shoes dirty. It can be done, but carefully, and it smells bad.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by andi*pandi 

Trying to read threads in here now is similar to trying to walk through a disreputable bar bathroom at closing time without getting your shoes dirty. It can be done, but carefully, and it smells bad.

Wow, you're classy. The 'ladies' that I meet at closing time can hardly speak let alone walk.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by seanc 

Sometimes the urge to clean-up cannot be overcome...

I'm with Sean on this. Unfortunately, it's been a real challenge for me to wade in and squish the spam I find because our current tools are hard to use and not as sophisticated as what we used to have. On a related note, we're working on going back to vBulletin as we speak, so those tools will be back in our hands soon. I do not know HOW soon, but they'll be there. And with that return, we'll be able to return to the reporting contest! (Yes, I'm stoked about this.)

[subego]

I think I speak for the whole forum when I say you are never, ever allowed to leave us again like that without saying goodbye.

[ghporter]

I didn't "leave," I just found it "challenging" to wade in and do moderation and administration tasks... It's still difficult to use this particular interface, but I'm working on staying in touch so I can be back in the swing of things when it isn't a challenge to moderate.

With that, I hope we'll also have the tools to mass-whack our recent spamomatic visitors; this interface makes it both more difficult and more time consuming to get rid of them. REPORTING has been working very well. It's just that once we know about them, we have to ferret them out in all the forums instead of just telling vBulletin to "nuke this user and all of this user's posts." That was sure handy!

[turtle777]

I'm just amazed some of you mods are still here. You guys sound so terribly frustrated, I probably would have quit being a mod altogether.

-t

[ghporter]

It's baaaaack! Welcome back to the Spam Reporting Contest! Here are January's results. We got back to vBulletin on Jan 5, and the first spam report was on Jan 6. Here's what happened:
Spheric Harlot-5
rjenkinson----3
subego------2
angelmb-----1
CharlesS-----1
Dork.------1
FireWire-----1
Gankdawg---1
iMOTOR-----1
Shaddim-----1
Uncle Skeleton--1
Waragainstsleep--1
Ω------1

33 spam reports, 20 different spammer handles, 10 of which were apparently exactly the same spammer. Persistent cuss, wasn't he?

Thanks for helping out! Expect February's results shortly.

[ghporter]

And now...February. For a short month, we had only a very few spam reports. See below:

Spheric Harlot---5
subego-------3
shifuimam-----2
CharlesS-------1
Snow-i-------1
The Final Dakar-1

16 spam reports, 13 different spammer handles (bababangg was reported 4 times).

Great work, as usual, folks! March seems to be kind of slow so far, but that may only be a lull. January was rough on the spammer population, considering how easy December had been for them under Hudler. They may just be honing their "I'm not really a bot written by someone who does not speak English at all" skills.

[Spheric Harlot]

So, is this place just not as on-the-rader, now that it's no longer running Huddler's software, or is it just a lot harder to script for than Huddler, or is it just a matter of diminishing returns, and it's a lot more lucrative to script tools for Huddler, because of their one-size-fits-all backend to a whole bunch of forums?

[reader50]

Huddler had only two spam defenses - the 'defensio' AI unit, and IP blocks of entire countries. It also had single-IP blocks, but those were useless against spammers.

Blocking entire countries was too coarse in most cases (we did block Vietnam), and 'defensio' worked by moderating (hiding) anything suspicious. So it soft-deleted posts (a power reserved to human mods in our opinion) and required manual sifting of everything it hid. We wouldn't do the sifting, and didn't like it deleting member posts. So we turned it off.

Under Huddler, the unhappy mod staff was the only spam defense. Now, we have our comprehensive blocks again. IP blocks of hot ranges, registration sifting against blacklists, and a few special tricks I've coded. The blacklist registration checks alone have blocked over 1,000 since we returned.

Both boards do have CAPTCHAs which I didn't count. That stops the dumbest of spammers, and force the rest to employ sub-minimum-wage people in the 3rd world. So technically, CAPTCHAs do help world unemployment, even if they don't do much else.

[ghporter]

It is that time again, and here are the March results for the Spam Reporting Contest.

It was, shall we say, a "slack" month for spammers here at MacNN. Only 12 valid spam reports this time, with a suspicious eye cast on a few posters who at the moment continue to be considered innocent until...

Spheric Harlot 6
Subego 3
The Final Dakar 2
Shaddim 1
Total Reports 12

Some of these spammers were pretty easy to spot, and others less so. Either way, thanks for all the attention paid to the content of the forums and for the help with keeping the spammers at bay.

[The Final Dakar]

The beauty of leaving huddler.

[shifuimam]

Would it be possible to add like a "reason" drop-down for reporting posts? I don't know if vbulletin has that capability... might make it faster to report spammers instead of making up some text for the "reason" box.

Although trying to come up with creative ways of saying "spam" can be pretty entertaining.

[ghporter]

Here are the results from April. I'm sort of disappointed...there were only 9 spammer reports. Of course there were fewer spammer attempts, too, and many of them were spam posts in the same thread. Our shields are repelling far more spammers than ever before, but they still get through now and then, so thanks to all for helping squish them as quickly as possible.

Shifuimam, I'm not certain if a drop-down would be as useful as you think. Click on the drop-down, scroll to the appropriate epithet, click on the epithet...that's 3 actions when typing "Spam" is only four (OK, 5 if you count the shift key ) keystrokes. It's probably doable, but I don't know if it's worth doing. Unless lots of people ask for it, of course. Then I'll leave it to reader50 to figure out if it is doable or "doable but a pain in the butt to do," which is possible, given the structure of vBulletin.

Now, the results...(drum roll....)
Spheric Harlot-- 6
Mattyb-- 1
Shaddim-- 1
Shifuimam-- 1
Total-- 9

I wonder if Spheric Harlot actually sleeps, or maybe it's because many of the spammers come from time zones closer to "normal waking hours" for Spheric, which are quite a bit different from North American hours. In any case, thanks to all for the vigilance and effort.