Guests posting in the forums

[SNGX1275]

Maybe has something to do with stuff from the main page being in other forums too now?

Here 2 guests posted in response to a forum question:
https://www.techspot.com/community/topics/newly-upgraded-pc-wont-turn-on.207865/

 

[mailpup]

I've noticed it too. At first I thought it was because the guest had posted in a thread before it was moved to the regular forums and that could still be but then I also saw a couple guests in "regular" threads as shown above.

 

[Julio Franco]

I had to open most forums to guest posting if I wanted to move news discussions to other forums and have those still open to guests. So it was an all or nothing decision. I'm giving it a try. As a counter-measurement for spam, we started using Nocaptcha.

 

[DelJo63]

Hmm; I think I like some others would disallow guest posting everywhere. If they will not register, then WHY should the have the privilege?

 

[learninmypc]

Hmm; I think I like some others would disallow guest posting everywhere. If they will not register, then WHY should the have the privilege?

I agree.

 

[learninmypc]

I think if one wants to reply to a thread in the main part of the forum, they should need to register. As far as the "Community" goes, perhaps not.JMO

 

[SNGX1275]

At this point, I actually don't have much of a problem with it. Now if we start getting guest trolls, then yes, figure out some way to disallow.

 

[Julio Franco]

That's the idea... hence the trial and adjustments to avoid mass spammers.

 

[VitalyT]

Just pull the plug on all Guest postings. It's not like TechSpot will lose something valuable, more like the opposite, less nonsense.

 

[SNGX1275]

I've noticed a few threads now where the guest replies are bumping things from quite a while back with the post of essentially: "I'm having the same problem too, how do I fix it?".

Suppose we can report back in a few months with if its even more than now, but this is certainly something that is happening now that never happened before (obviously). I don't like to see new posts in a thread that I have helped people solve their problems in get bumped by a guest asking the same question, or even worse saying they've tried everything in the thread and it didn't work and now what? IMO if you can't bother to register here, you don't deserve an answer.

 

[DelJo63]

The algorithm is

• user = guest
• post count today == 0 -> allow else deny
• 
  
• user = new user
• post count today ==0 && post count <=10 -> allow else deny
• retain status = new user until post count > 11

 

[stewi0001]

Something has to happen. I guess the capca thing isn't working out very well.

 

[Julio Franco]

There's been an escalation of spam and poor quality guest comments. You'll be happy to hear we have temporarily disabled all guest commenting until further notice.

We are actively fighting spam with newer tools and rules, too, but that's hardly an exact science.

 

[DelJo63]

Ok; suggest moderation of new users and controlling threshold of status change

 

[stewi0001]

There's been an escalation of spam and poor quality guest comments. You'll be happy to hear we have temporarily disabled all guest commenting until further notice.

We are actively fighting spam with newer tools and rules, too, but that's hardly an exact science.

I understand completely. I used to do web forums many moons ago.

 

[SNGX1275]

Ok; suggest moderation of new users and controlling threshold of status change

New members are moderated somewhat automatically, a lot of junk posts (and an occasional good one) get caught up in a moderation queue. In there, a mod has to approve, delete, or 'do nothing' and let another mod handle it.

They seem to be more aggressive (spammers) than in the recent past (there were some really bad ones several years ago) - I deleted 4 just in the moderation queue and then a few minutes later there were 3 more from the same user, so I had to use the spam tool to ban. Most of the time (in my experience recently) they are hit and run spammers so you don't really need to ban, just delete and problem is solved. These guys are sticking around longer.