What's with AskAboutMoney?

Myuser01

Registered User
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27
Newbie to this forum. Having issues already though.

Spam post filter triggers for word "fit_ness".

Can't reply to posts on my thread. Gives 10 min timeout.

Can't contact Brendan (founder).

What's up?
 
These are anti-spam measures

Spammers flood askaboutmoney, so there is an anti-flood measure which makes new users wait 10 minutes to post a second time. So we usually get to ban them before their second post.

And by replacing the word fitness and other words like spamspam and spamspamspam with the word spam we make their links meaningless.

Brendan
 
These are anti-spam measures

Spammers flood askaboutmoney, so there is an anti-flood measure which makes new users wait 10 minutes to post a second time. So we usually get to ban them before their second post.

And by replacing the word spamspamspamspam and other words like spamspam and spamspamspam with the word spam we make their links meaningless.

Brendan
Thanks Brendan.

In terms of the spam filter. Seems like you are using a sledgehammer to open a cashew nut IMO. You must get a lot of false positives?

Your options are more limited Brendan because it appears to be a custom coded forum web app. But have you thought about using Google reCAPTCHA v2 by any chance?

You wouldn't need the spam filter substitutions as Google would blacklist the spam bots etc... You could also use a reCAPTCHA for registration and a double opt-in email check. You could also remove the ability to link to other sites in the posts.

Really you have a number of other options without going nuclear and harming user experience.

Great domain name though and I like the site.... :)
 
These are anti-spam measures...

...And by replacing the word spamspamspamspam and other words like spamspam and spamspamspam with the word spam we make their links meaningless.

The text replacement is very crude and is not anti-spam. We can still see the spam and it's still annoying. Preventing them from posting in the first place would be an anti-spam measure.
 
The text replacement is very crude and is not anti-spam. We can still see the spam and it's still annoying. Preventing them from posting in the first place would be an anti-spam measure.

No anti-spam measure is 100% effective, spammers have tools that can defeat CAPTCHAs and pretty much any measure you can put in place. What would the user experience cost of more stringent measures be here? The majority of spam posts are caught by a filter and never make it to the public forum. The volumes that make it through are very low, and the links are broken in the vast majority of cases. The word replacement measure is crude, but it's rarely triggered (looks like 11 times so far in 2020).

If AAM had the financial resources of the spammers, we might do more, but as it stands Brendan maintains AAM from personal funds and the occasional donation. AAM is not revenue generating.
 
No anti-spam measure is 100% effective, spammers have tools that can defeat CAPTCHAs and pretty much any measure you can put in place. What would the user experience cost of more stringent measures be here? The majority of spam posts are caught by a filter and never make it to the public forum. The volumes that make it through are very low, and the links are broken in the vast majority of cases. The word replacement measure is crude, but it's rarely triggered (looks like 11 times so far in 2020).

If AAM had the financial resources of the spammers, we might do more, but as it stands Brendan maintains AAM from personal funds and the occasional donation. AAM is not revenue generating.
Well word replacement triggers for words like "fit-ness" and that was used at least 4 times in my other thread.

More worrying from a UX perspective though is the 10min timeout between posts. That's a site killer IMO.

You need a CMS with a premium anti-spam plugin with a community behind it. You have a number of choices...

1. Continue to stick your arm in the dam and try to fight spam yourself come hell or high water.
2. Integrate a spam filtering tool like a Google captcha or your own branded math spam captcha perhaps. How about a roll your own solution that poses challenges like "what's the capital of ireland?"
3. Start all over again with an open source forum web app and leverage the spam tools and community to fight spam for you. Like akismet does for the wordpress world.

IMO #2 wouldn't take long and would improve AAM UX immeasurably...

PS: you don't have to defeat the spammers per se. Just put enough hurdles in their way so that it's no longer worth their while attacking.
 
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I am an average user of AAM who has spent the last 30 years working in technology .
I respectfully disagree with your opinion .

You fail to take into consideration that your posts got caught by the word replacement as it was not really relevant to the core vision of the site.
The 10 minute timeout only affects new users and most new users have coped fine without suggesting that the site be recreated .
Captchas would be irritating to the majority of users .
 
Paying the exorbitant monthly AAM membership fee and then not being able to include phrases like “l.i.t.t.l.e b.l.u.e p.i.l.l” in my posts is infuriating to be honest.

Seriously, in all of the years I’ve been here, only once has a word I’ve used been rejected by the system.
 
Jeez, you're just on the site and criticising. There are lots of supportive people around here, generally very to the point. Have you considered that not being able to post more than once in ten minutes may have been a blessing for the rest of us?
 
If I were you Brendan, I'd redirect the forum to another clean .ie domain for six months. Then migrate the site. Sell AAM.com.

Retire a rich man. Then run the other forum as a hobby.

A domain like AAM should be making you money by the boatload mate. Not costing you money.

Just my 2 cents.
 
2. Integrate a spam filtering tool like a Google captcha or your own branded math spam captcha perhaps. How about a roll your own solution that poses challenges like "what's the capital of ireland?"
I personally do not enjoy using captchas and recaptchas. There was a lovely Snoopy cartoon on this recently... Recaptcha is showing Snoopy a picture of his doghouse and requesting he state if it is a house, a bed or a plane. Good question...
 
I am an average user of AAM who has spent the last 30 years working in technology .
I respectfully disagree with your opinion .

You fail to take into consideration that your posts got caught by the word replacement as it was not really relevant to the core vision of the site.
The 10 minute timeout only affects new users and most new users have coped fine without suggesting that the site be recreated .
Captchas would be irritating to the majority of users .
Thanks huskerdu.

What about a geography challenge for registration then?
 
I can’t believe I’m giving you another 2 minutes of my time. Even in a pandemic, I must be bored .

We don’t need to and dont want to put up any more barriers to people wanting to ask advice on AAM. It’s a community website .

It’s not perfect but we don’t need to mess with it
 
What about a geography challenge for registration then?

Is there not one already?

We certainly had one asking people to name Ireland's second largest city.

While most people answered it correctly, I get occasional emails from Irish people frustrated by being unable to answer it.
And I gave them the choice of Cork cork Belfast belfast , so maybe they were spelling it Kilkenny .

No system is perfect we just aim for fitness for purpose.

Brendan
 
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