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quick psa on last night's huge spam attack


Integrity
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yo, i nipped out of work to handle this so this will be very brief and informal

 

1. all registration is temporarily disabled for a day or so while this passes. if you're reading this as a guest, my apologies, i'll temporarily waive the need to have an sf account to get into the discord if you point this post out to me instead.

2. i brute-force deleted every account registered so far on the 23rd of may by american standards, so if you're the one legitimate user who happened to register among all that spam (i scanned and didn't see any but i'm not perfect), again, apologies and you'll be able to re-register with the same account soon.

3. for you, the user, if you see a massive spam attack, please do not go through and bespoke-report every single thread. a report calls our attention to something and, once we're there, we can start bulk-deleting threads and (i, at least) can bulk-delete people. the only thing bulk reporting accomplishes is that i have to then also go bulk-close reports after handling everything else. i absolutely appreciate the community's involvement in tamping down on this, generally, but some of you went way too far last night.

 

think that's it. cheers. i'll update this thread when i unlock registrations.

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First, and most importantly, a massive thank you to you and all other admins and mods who are putting in the work to deal with this crap. I like this place, and I really appreciate all the graft that goes on behind the scenes to keep it usable for us, mob of wretched ingrates that we are. Thank you.

Second, if you can find the time at any point, I'd find it helpful if you could write up something a little bit longer about how we, as users, can best help out. My approach has always been to report stuff that I think is potentially missable, like replies to existing threads or hidden links in generative AI posts, but not bother with the stuff that's so obvious that you can't possibly miss it, no matter how much you're sleep-deprived and in a rush. I've no idea if that's what's most helpful though, and could use a bit more guidance. Not a huge priority, mind, but if you have time then it would be nice to have.

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3 hours ago, lenticular said:

I'd find it helpful if you could write up something a little bit longer about how we, as users, can best help out. My approach has always been to report stuff that I think is potentially missable, like replies to existing threads or hidden links in generative AI posts, but not bother with the stuff that's so obvious that you can't possibly miss it, no matter how much you're sleep-deprived and in a rush.

you're essentially right with that - the nasty ones are the edited posts and the ones that get tucked into innocuous threads, and those ought to just be reported every time since it's pretty unlikely we'll stumble on them. it does happen, though!

in general, any Batch of spam is worth reporting an example thread from, particularly if it's tucked away in one of the less-used forums (one of the places these guys hit was spriting). having a report trail is sometimes a little useful since it lets me know when one of my minions cleaned things up for me so i can praise them appropriately, and Flagging One Report is a minimal taskload on top of the cleanup. the problem only shows up when it's, like, closing 30 threads and banning 14 users, and then there's 30 reports to also flag as complete. the mod control panel only displays 20 or 25 reports at a time (i forget) so that's when you start to get into an interface hangover. generally, though, if someone's Reporting A Spam, i consider that to be good community service and appreciate it. this only comes up in the thread now because one dude filed two hundred reports overnight for individual threads - that doesn't help anybody and only wastes your and our time. a handful of reports would have done it.

otherwise, the only thing to point out is that we'll always be more responsive on discord than here. i try to poke my head in here a few times a day to keep the habit going, but a discord DM will go right to my phone and could mean the difference between me cleaning up a spam before i head into work and not finding it until 3 or 4 EST. that's not to compel anyone to use discord, of course, but if someone's already on both and could make a report or drop a ping/dm, the latter will always get a faster response.

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5 hours ago, Integrity said:

this only comes up in the thread now because one dude filed two hundred reports overnight for individual threads - that doesn't help anybody and only wastes your and our time

Ah, I see the advanced spammer got you with the sneak attack.

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10 hours ago, Integrity said:

3. for you, the user, if you see a massive spam attack, please do not go through and bespoke-report every single thread. a report calls our attention to something and, once we're there, we can start bulk-deleting threads and (i, at least) can bulk-delete people. the only thing bulk reporting accomplishes is that i have to then also go bulk-close reports after handling everything else.

Could always include an public indicator that says that an certain post has been reported

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1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

Could always include an public indicator that says that an certain post has been reported

three things about that

 

1) that's a really toxic idea for the community, people spuriously report posts that are just like 'i don't like that this guy is being mean to me' when the post in question is like 'hey actually this is wrong because x xx xxx'. having a public 'this post has been reported' counter is like a reddit -1 voted comment, it just drives people to disregard the post in question

2) multiple reports on a single thread go into the same 'report' on the mod side of things and are handled with the same action automatically. if a hundred people report the same post it's 1 'report' with 100 'comments'. there's not enough solid citizens who report the spam that even if every one of them accidentally reported different threads in an attack it would become an issue

3) ip.board literally doesn't support it lmao

E: ftr i don't mind the speculation! i don't mean to be mean debunking, wild suggestion from laymen is responsible for some great policies. it's just shotgunning for good and ill

Edited by Integrity
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16 hours ago, Integrity said:

having a public 'this post has been reported' counter is like a reddit -1 voted comment, it just drives people to disregard the post in question

Yeah, but at least with Reddit, the downvoted guy is an victim of mob mentality...Because, hey, it's Reddit.

 

16 hours ago, Integrity said:

that's a really toxic idea for the community, people spuriously report posts that are just like 'i don't like that this guy is being mean to me' when the post in question is like 'hey actually this is wrong because x xx xxx'.

I genuinely won't be surprised if stuff like this occasionally happens here,though

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  • 2 weeks later...

poor dude happened to press the spam button right when i was doing a vanity check of the viewcount on my steam platinums blog. you hate to see it

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  • 3 weeks later...

hey that new one was a bit alarming please ping me (E: or an online mod) immediately on discord if you see something like that again, maybe report it too but don't rely on the report system if you have access to me there. a good chunk of you (correctly) reported it and i'm glad for that.

Edited by Integrity
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