On Wednesday, 5 December 2012 at 22:40:39 UTC, js.mdnq wrote:
Hehe, it's cause no one uses it! if you check out most groups
they are full of spam ;/ Only good spam filters can control it
to any degree. With a BB, you require people to register which
will stop 95% of spam. The other 5% could be fixed by asking
more complex questions, stop posting of suspected spammers.
Web bulletin boards, especially those using off-the-shelf
software and common anti-spam plugins, are very attractive to
spammers.
Do not allow new users to post more than 1 post an hour. Allow
certain people(not necessarily moderators) to kill spammers.
Block IP's from registering more than once a month or so, etc...
All of these are draconian restrictions that WILL get into honest
people's way.
There are many potential ways to reduce spam to near zero. Most
BB's I've used have near zero spam without any complex spam
protection mechanisms(as far as I know).
A certain popular forum I'm a moderator of sees almost zero
publicly-visible spam.
Why?
Because each user's first 5 posts must be manually approved by a
moderator before they are publicly visible.
This is a gruesome, tiring, repetitive task that no one wants to
do every day.
Even worse, the software (a popular commercial forum package)
doesn't even show these posts to the user who posted them. This
creates more confusion and duplicate posts.
Anti-spam plugins are not a panacea. All of them have false
positives, and - worse - false negatives. Furthermore, like any
plugins/modifications, they complicate software maintenance and
may break on software upgrades, thus possibly locking you into a
potentially-vulnerable old version of the software.
IMO, the only downside is supporting legacy users who refuse to
make the transition. I think they are just being hard headed
though...
I think that's a rather close-minded viewpoint.
