Important Answers about Spam

[nexialys]

It's a known fact, popular forums like CF.com are spoiled by spammers, trolls and unwanted content.

With the CF2 event, this site's upgrade added one cool feature that nobody was aware of, and which will help your life at each moment of the day. This is called "Akismet"... http://akismet.com/i/buttons/akismet-jim.png

Akismet is an automatic spam filter that is used on the internet to intercept the spam we usually find in blogs and emails. This engine was developped by the guys who released the blog system called Wordpress, and here is the FAQ about the product: FAQ < Akismet (http://akismet.com/faq/)

The way it will work on CF2 ?!.. simple. The system automatically check the content of new posts in the forum AND your blogs, and if the content is already verified to be a known spam text, you will see that post "tagged" as spam, and the post itself moderated automatically, so you are not bothered by it anymore.

But it is also more useful on the moderation side, because any moderator on the site can tag a post or a thread that is known to be spam... so if you come across a message that you consider as spam, you Report the Post, and the moderators will be able to "Delete Posts as Spam"... they will be registered in our database as spam, and all similar texts will now be filtered as well, so you are now safe.

Is it filtering PMs ?!... sure it is.. :) it is also filtering emails you would send thru the emailer, so if you spam via email, you will be tagged as spammer.

This system is so powerful inside the forum software that we're not only filtering the posts, we are filtering the authors too... when we tag posts as spam, we can filter all posts of this author, and also ban that author... the IP and Username will be tagged as spammer so the author will never be able to reconnect here with that IP!

Is it safe enough?!... sure, but sometimes we may wrongly filter a post... when you think you were wrongly tagged as spammer, you can use the "Contact Us" form in the bottom of this site to contact the administrators!

...

Enjoy CF2 !

[karen freeinchristman]

this is an interesting feature! I am a little concerned about people accidentally posting things that might cause them to be banned, though. Is there a more specific guideline as to what will cause this automatic filter to take action?

Edited to add - just realised you posted a FAQ link... off to check it out now... :)

[Glass*Soul]

What sorts of things get tagged as spam?

[Tychicus2]

Will counting threads in the numbers forum still be allowed or will they be tagged as Spam?

What about the games in the numbers forum?

Ty

[nexialys]

What sorts of things get tagged as spam?
the usual spam is not words you use in your regular discussions on CF2... you can thing of any pron sentences, or ads from known companies that are used to spam the internet....

this system is not based on specific words because we never know what usage can be made of a specific word.

as an example:Don't miss the chance to get top designe watches todayThis sentence is the title of a spam email from yahoo.com... it's a copy/paste sentence, well known these days, and if someone play the stupid and use it in their posts, Akismet will think it's a spam...

this is the same for text inside a post... this: View Pictures of Local Singles - Click HereWill be taken as spam because it's another popular sentence used in spam emails...

It is not a word filter, it will not filter words like G*d, D*vil, Sh*t... (sorry) but these words are used in regular discussions for millions of persons...

[nexialys]

To become a real Spam and not a Ham like they say on Akismet, the sentence have to be identified as spam by more than 1% of the clients using that system... if CF2 is identifying a post as spam, and nobody else, Akismet will tag that kind of posts only for CF2, not for the whole internet... but as said, if 1% of the clients Akismet are tagging the same kind of words, it will be locked and tagged as real spam!

[Lel]

CF gets stupid spammers trying to sell cell phones all the time. It's the same message every time, with maybe one or two sentences different. Do we know if Akismet is picking them up, or how can the database be updated specifically to pick up the cell phone spammers?

[intricatic]

Very cool - Akismet is a good system.

[SirAdrian]

It's great for blogs, but I'm still not sold on it for forums yet.

It was also the cause of the moderation bugs we've been having lately. I might try some alternatives out later, but for now we're stuck with it.

[intricatic]

Yeah, I can see it causing some possible problems when implemented on a live forum environment. I've never liked automated systems to deal with human problems, but they can work well after some trial and error.