[ghporter]

Amazingly (at least to me), I've managed to work up the spam reporting data for September. I need to list some caveats so that my process and the rules I used are as transparent as possible. First, this is based on a single month per my time zone (US Central Time), so this first set of data started with 1Sep2009 at 0500 UTC and ended with 1Oct2009 at 0500 UTC. Second, I credited only the first report of a valid spammer, without getting into the "more points for first report, fewer for second, fewer still for third" zone-way too complicated for me to handle right now. Third, ties are decided by who got to the count in question first: if UserA reported his 3rd spammer on Sep15 and UserB reported his 3rd on Sep16, then UserA wins; this can go by the complete date/time stamp of the report.

OK, without further ado, here's my results for 41 spam reports:
Simon 7 Overall Winner for September 2009!
turtle777 7
CharlesS 7
SphericHarlot 6
AKcrab 3
BigMac 3
Starman 1
richwig83 1
Brien 1
ChrisF 1
abbaZaba 1
imitchellg5 1
rjenkinson 1
slugslugslug 1

Special recognition goes to chiben00, who actually reported himself as a spammer!

If tomorrow goes as I hope, I'll get October's numbers cranked out too. Please note that vBulletin isn't helping me on this one iota; it's a manual process at the moment, so this is about as involved as I can get it right now. Hopefully I'll be able to automate at least some of it in the future, but for now, even tallying each report is a cut-and-paste effort, and thus pretty time consuming.

Prizes? Still haven't gotten that figured out yet...

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Special recognition goes to chiben00, who actually reported himself as a spammer!

Thanks, Glenn. Great work.

-t

[CharlesS]

What did chiben00 do, use the "Report Abuse" button to send you guys a helpful notice about where to get cheap pharmaceuticals?

Thanks for putting up the results!

[Simon]

Great job, Glenn. Thanks.

[Cold Warrior]

Good work guys. I think our boards are some of the cleanest around. Sometimes during research I hit other forums and blogs and their un-culled spam is a big eyesore.

[reader50]

chiben00 forgot to confirm his email address, so he couldn't reply to anything. But Report still works. So he reported a VGA-monitors-question post to us, and tried to sell World of Warcraft gold to the staff.

[turtle777]

Again,

-t

[imitchellg5]

WHOA. I nearly won!

[ghporter]

I hope to have everything caught up soon, with October and November coming out pretty much together and December finished over the weekend. Wish me luck-there's been plenty to keep me busy lately and the contest has slipped from near the top to much farther down on my priority list.

The good news is that I actually will have plenty of time to work on the contest over the weekend because my new job gives me more time free in the afternoon and evening.

[turtle777]

Thanks, Glenn. We appreciate your work.

-t

[Eriamjh]

I just reported my first, but I might not have been the first.

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by Eriamjh 

I just reported my first, but I might not have been the first.

Good job. You were indeed the first. A phone spammer with three threads, now gone.

[ghporter]

NewNewNew!!!!!

October Results are IN!!! 51 reported, unique spammers, rough competition, but surprisingly few repeat reports. The winners are:
(Member-number of reports)
turtle777-14
Simon -10
Spheric Harlot-6
CharlesS-4
AKcrab-3
Andy8-2
Big Mac -2
Art Vandelay -1
ChrisF-1
design219-1
Doofy-1
Dork.-1
imitchellg5 -1
jerry9920-1
P-1
Rumor-1
The Final Dakar-1
Total-51

Congratulations turtle777!!!! Keep up the great work!

[ghporter]

EVEN NEWER!!!

November results are also in! Again, lots of reports, again, lots of competition but relatively few repeat reports.

The winners are:
(Member-number of reports)
Simon-18
Andy8-6
CharlesS-5
AKcrab-4
turtle777-4
Spheric Harlot-2
andi-pandi (before promotion)-1
Big Mac-1
Brien-1
FireWire-1
GuyWithACamera-1
Laminar-1
starman-1
subego-1
Total-47

Congratulations Simon! That's a LOT of reports!

[ghporter]

I would also be remiss if I didn't thank the tireless (if somewhat stupid) spammers that reported themselves in October and November.

clippingpath spammed his product, some sort of image manipulation app, in several forums in October-but only reported himself rather than posting his spam.

liyufang and californiatim reported themselves in November. They were less casual about it, but oh so commercial.

Let's give these guys a big hand. <Texas Hill Country>Bless their hearts...</Texas Hill Country>*

*means something like "they're 'special'".

[turtle777]

Thanks, Glenn for your work on this

Wow, how did I drop the ball in Nov ?

I promise, I did better in Dec

-t

[Simon]

I was on vacation in October. Guess that's why I didn't win them all.

Thanks for update, Glenn.

[Spheric Harlot]

Ah. It seems I actually got a life in November.

[CharlesS]

Either that, or you just didn't get first report on the spam posts that came in because Simon was apparently sitting on the front page mashing the Reload button all day.

[Eug]

turtle777 7

apropos

[ghporter]

In a stunning development, Glenn has collected, sorted, filtered and collated the spam reports from December ALREADY!!!!!11! Results:

Simon -14
turtle777 -11
Spheric Harlot -8
AKcrab -7
CharlesS -7
Big Mac -2
mduell -2
64stang06 -1
dcmacdaddy -1
Eriamjh -1
imitchellg5 -1
Laminar -1
rjenkinson -1
Rumor -1
The Final Dakar -1
TheoCryst -1

Once again, Simon takes the lead with turtle777 just a few spammers behind. And please remember, all of you are winners because you helped us keep the forums as spam-free as possible. And narcing on this sort of scum is fun, too!

Oh, and a dishonorable mention goes to both bomkesh and m_shivakumar who very politely reported themselves while attempting to sully our forums with their spammy wares.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Either that, or you just didn't get first report on the spam posts that came in because Simon was apparently sitting on the front page mashing the Reload button all day.

Grapes? Sour?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Once again, Simon takes the lead...

Thank you, thank you. Now where's that FedEx truck with my double quarter pounders?

[Simon]

I promise to lay back in Jan. Just so some of the kids here can have some fun too.

[turtle777]

I have a new theory: Simon creates those spam nicks, and then reports it from his main handle

-t

[Simon]

[Andy8]

I must have been asleep in December.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by Simon 

Multiple-cloned man trapped in green balloons? Yes, I got it.

[Spheric Harlot]

polytesticular anthropomorphosis?

sour grapes?

[Simon]

Genetically modified ones actually.

[brassplayersrock²]

Add one to my name for January

[ghporter]

I'd like to post notice that, as my 30th wedding anniversary is this week and we're celebrating it this weekend, you should not expect the January results until the first weekend in February. I like you guys just fine, but... well I think you'll all understand.

[Andy8]

No problem Glenn - enjoy your special weekend!

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

I'd like to post notice that, as my 30th wedding anniversary is this week and we're celebrating it this weekend, you should not expect the January results until the first weekend in February. I like you guys just fine, but... well I think you'll all understand.

Congrats to you and your wife! Have lots of fun

[Simon]

Congratulations, Glenn. Have a nice weekend together.

[ghporter]

Well I'm ahead of schedule this time. Here are the results for January!

Simon -14-First on 4 multiply reported spammers
turtle777 -11-First on 3 multiply reported spammers
Andy8 -6-First on 1 multiply reported spammer
Big Mac -4
Oisín -4
AKcrab -2
brassplayersrock² -1
CharlesS -1
dav -1
dedalus -1
EndlessMac -1
imitchellg5 -1
Laminar -1
Railroader -1
residentEvil -1
Spheric Harlot -1
Stogieman -1
The Final Dakar -1
Total-53

What a contest! There were several mulitple-thread spammers who got summarily trounced, and many instances of a new spam thread being reported minutes after being created! Great work guys!

[Andy8]

Great work Glenn.

Hope the weekend went well for you.

Keep up the good work!

[Simon]

Thanks for the update, Glenn.

[turtle777]

Damn, Simon, and this is when you lay back ?

-t

[Simon]

Oops, sorry 'bout that. Hmm, at least to me it felt as if I was laying back. I'll try extra hard this month, ok?

[ghporter]

We had a very nice weekend on San Antonio's River Walk. It was chilly and windy on Saturday, but the just meant smaller crowds. It was a very fun day and a very fun weekend. Thanks for the good wishes.

And keep up the vigil! It looks like stupid spammers are increasing while smart ones are getting smarter; we need to watch out for both. You guys are our first line of defense.

[Simon]

That sounds great, Glenn. The River Walk is very nice. I hope you had a delicious steak at the Little Rhein Steak House. When I was in San Antonio for business last year I had a hard time staying away from the place.

[ghporter]

We actually had lunch at a little place off the River Walk and near the courthouse. Later, still not quite hungry because of the enormous and wonderful lasagna at lunch. we stopped at a little coffee house near our hotel and had a cup and a bite. It turned out that not having a "typical date" dinner was much more comfortable for us, and we enjoyed the whole day quite a lot. We also got to take the river taxi through the locks to the newest addition to the River Walk, all the way past the museum to the Pearl Brewery, which is becoming a night spot (especially since it hasn't been a real brewery for a long time, Pearl or anything else!). Just doing the whole day at our own pace and together was great.

Little Rhein will be there, and we'll stop by some time later. This weekend, our friends are treating us to a performance of "The 39 Steps" at the Majestic. Lovely theater, and a production we'd never had thought to make time for otherwise.

Thanks for the good wishes, everyone.

[ghporter]

February Results!

February was an odd month, but not without some interesting competition. It appears Simon lives on MacNN, based on the hours of his reports. And he won again this month.

Simon ..........11
Spheric Harlot ..........6
Oisín ..........4
turtle777 ..........4
Andy8 ..........3
Big Mac ..........3
P ..........2
AKcrab ..........1
dcmacdaddy ..........1
Doofy ..........1
Eug ..........1
imitchellg5 ..........1
Laminar ..........1
mdc ..........1
rjenkinson ..........1
Rumor ..........1
slugslugslug ..........1
Thorzdad ..........1
Total..........44

Great work, folks. We're a really good team.

[turtle777]

Only 3rd place ?

Seem like you didn't get my bribe. Darn it.

-t

[Simon]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Only 3rd place ?

4th actually. Suck on that.

j/k

Seem like you didn't get my bribe. Darn it.

No, actually I did. No, actually they did. But Oisín made the better offer.

[Oisín]

Yeah, fourth!

[Simon]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

It appears Simon lives on MacNN, based on the hours of his reports.

You see that's the odd thing with constant traveling. You end up being out of sync with pretty much everybody. With one exception, the spammers. I've noticed that often times when I catch one, the spammer and I are the only people online. Either spammers travel a lot too or they're just really good at knowing when you guys are all tucked away.

Thanks for the stats, Glenn.

BTW, turtle, March is your chance. I spent the first week of this month at a busy conference and didn't have time to look in a whole lot. Hope in the meantime you made good use of the report button and got yourself pole position for the March contest.

[Oisín]

^ Meh. I haven’t seen/caught a single one this past week. Typical.

[Simon]

If only you knew what other powers I possess.