Is Anything Being Done to Prevent this Flood of Spam Posts?

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

It's a recurring problem, and I don't believe relying on Forest members to report them (and on Mods to remove them) every time they pop up is a viable long-term solution. These posts have nothing to do with our online community, and merely create clutter - assuming there is nothing malicious behind them. Ideally, they would be blocked before they can even be posted publicly. Is there any mechanism in place that could accomplish this?

[ciphertul]

I was just thinking about how there always seem to be more popping up every day. Maybe something along the lines of auto modding thread titles with to many languages?

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

40 minutes ago, ciphertul said:

I was just thinking about how there always seem to be more popping up every day. Maybe something along the lines of auto modding thread titles with to many languages?

Since they appear to all have the same format, perhaps the moderators could apply a filter to some of the characters, or character sequences, that the title features? That way, they could be blocked, unless they receive specific approval. I don't think it's necessary to stop all posts with Chinese characters.

[ciphertul]

5 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Since they appear to all have the same format, perhaps the moderators could apply a filter to some of the characters, or character sequences, that the title features? That way, they could be blocked, unless they receive specific approval. I don't think it's necessary to stop all posts with Chinese characters.

I mean since the title are repeated 3 times in different languages. Use that as a flag.

[Integrity]

yes, we're doing shit to handle it, that's why you're only seeing the small amount you are relative to what's being levied at us

E: i can't be on sf all the time so dm me on discord when they pop up or something

E2: do you dorks not realize the optics of having a manual-moderator-approval-filter on any post that has chinese characters in the title, ignoring that the software doesn't support that, lmao

Edited April 21, 2023 by Integrity

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

yes, we're doing shit to handle it, that's why you're only seeing the small amount you are relative to what's being levied at us

Well, thank you for that. I was unaware of a larger amount being levied at the site. Are there in fact ways of blocking them before they are posted?

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

E: i can't be on sf all the time so dm me on discord when they pop up or something

I'm not on Discord super often, but I appreciate knowing that this is an available avenue.

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

E2: do you dorks not realize the optics of having a manual-moderator-approval-filter on any post that has chinese characters in the title, ignoring that the software doesn't support that, lmao

I never advocated for requiring approval for chinese characters in general, only for ones that are in the titles. And not necessarily even in solo appearances, but in the particular sequences that are recurring. In the same sense that an auto-filter might detect certain words (i.e. racial slurs), and block such posts from being made public.

If the software doesn't support any such filter... well, I suppose that's that, then.

[Jotari]

Honestly, unless Fire Emblem starts releasing weapons with Chinese characters in their names (which is...not an impossibility, they certainly like having non standard characters in weapon names), I don't see any real situation in which anyone would need to put Chinese character's in a thread's title. The closest I can think would be a thread like that time someone accurately predicted that the Pugi would be translated as Vogue, non English script is definitely used for explaining such things, but it doesn't really need to be in the thread title, and, indeed, is going to be less indicative as to what the thread is actually about for English readers compared to a basic description.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Honestly, unless Fire Emblem starts releasing weapons with Chinese characters in their names (which is...not an impossibility, they certainly like having non standard characters in weapon names), I don't see any real situation in which anyone would need to put Chinese character's in a thread's title. The closest I can think would be a thread like that time someone accurately predicted that the Pugi would be translated as Vogue, non English script is definitely used for explaining such things, but it doesn't really need to be in the thread title, and, indeed, is going to be less indicative as to what the thread is actually about for English readers compared to a basic description.

Alternatively, just impose a ban on Canadian colleges in the thread titles. Because that's what they all seem to mention at the end. It's a sparse country, how many colleges could they have? Five? Six?

Jokes aside, limiting post titles to the Latin alphabet, the 10 digits, and some punctuation, isn't the craziest notion out there. My one concern is that it wouldn't be possible to include Japanese text in titles, when that's the original text of the games themselves. And a blanket ban on Chinese characters (which I never advocated for, mind you) could have the effect of blocking some kanji, too.

Anyway, if I want to post "You're saying Johalvier wrong, it's ヨハルヴァ, so don't use a hard 'J'" in Far From the Forest, well that's my god-given right!

[Jotari]

13 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Anyway, if I want to post "You're saying Johalvier wrong, it's ヨハルヴァ, so don't use a hard 'J'" in Far From the Forest, well that's my god-given right!

Well obviously the best actual solution would be for the entire world to convert to IPA, but despite my best efforts, that's not happening any time soon.

[Roxas]

7 hours ago, Integrity said:

do you dorks not realize the optics of having a manual-moderator-approval-filter on any post that has chinese characters in the title, ignoring that the software doesn't support that, lmao

LOL

[Armchair General]

11 hours ago, Jotari said:

Honestly, unless Fire Emblem starts releasing weapons with Chinese characters in their names (which is...not an impossibility, they certainly like having non standard characters in weapon names),

Well, there's the Wo Dao from 3H. Apparently, it's the Chinese name for Japanese-styled swords. Although, it also brings up the issue exactly which country in Fodlan specializes in an exotic form of swordsfighting that isn't Brigid or Dagda. Other than that, all I've mainly seen is the Greek alphabet attached to dark magic and some weird punctuation marks in Fates

But I doubt if they'll actually use Chinese characters within an Western translation when they can just translate the term, itself.

 

 

 

Edited April 21, 2023 by Armchair General

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Well, there's the Wo Dao from 3H. Apparently, it's the Chinese name for Japanese-styled swords. Although, it also brings up the issue exactly which country in Fodlan specializes in an exotic form of swordsfighting that isn't Brigid or Dagda. Other than that, all I've mainly seen is the Greek alphabet attached to dark magic and some weird punctuation marks in Fates

But I doubt if they'll actually use Chinese characters within an Western translation when they can just translate the term, itself.

 

 

 

Wo Dao from Three Houses? It's not from Three Houses specifically. It's been in almost every game since Binding Blade.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Seems I was wrong. Now they're referring to American universities as well!

[Armchair General]

So, around an year or two ago, I asked Eclipse about installing an moderation queue for new accounts so that these posts wouldn't clog up the "recent threads" section. Well, nothing much came of it and the mods usually do their housekeeping at least once an day; so I just wrote it off as an non-issue.

 

But between this and gambling shills, at least it's not getting any worse...yet.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Yo is this:

Spoiler

I can't post outside of Introductions!

It's probably time-based.  Please be patient.

I can't make topics!/I can't get on Discord!

That's based on your post count (no, I'm not going to tell you how much it is in public, I hate spammers).  Interact with the community for a bit, and you'll eventually be allowed to make your own topics.  Far from the Forest doesn't contribute towards your post count!

 

taken from here:

a thing or has ever been a thing? I realize it´s not gonna prevent spam floods and new members probably would get caught in the crossfire somewhere, but maybe it´d keep the newest topics feed clean and contain the spam to a singular subforum? 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Yeah, just saw the recent flood, and it's the worst it's ever looked. More than 200 spam posts in General, over the last four hours. And almost all from the same account! Is there a way to limit an account in how many topics it can create? I think a limit of, say, 6 per 24-hour period would be quite reasonable.

[Jotari]

59 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Yeah, just saw the recent flood, and it's the worst it's ever looked. More than 200 spam posts in General, over the last four hours. And almost all from the same account! Is there a way to limit an account in how many topics it can create? I think a limit of, say, 6 per 24-hour period would be quite reasonable.

And it's on going right this moment. Seems it's posting every minute. Maybe some one should mail a mod on discord.

[Integrity]

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Yeah, just saw the recent flood, and it's the worst it's ever looked. More than 200 spam posts in General, over the last four hours. And almost all from the same account! Is there a way to limit an account in how many topics it can create? I think a limit of, say, 6 per 24-hour period would be quite reasonable.

the answer is yes and the rule's been in place for years (it predates me, actually) and somehow it's gotten broken on the backend recently. investigating presently. these accounts shouldn't by all right have been able to do this

e: found the loophole

e2: trialing a new set of rules that should be a little less prohibitive to actual new users but catch spammers better

Edited October 12, 2023 by Integrity

[MeteorPhoenix]

God, RIP my rss feed. My sympathies to the mods.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, Integrity said:

the answer is yes and the rule's been in place for years (it predates me, actually) and somehow it's gotten broken on the backend recently. investigating presently. these accounts shouldn't by all right have been able to do this

e: found the loophole

e2: trialing a new set of rules that should be a little less prohibitive to actual new users but catch spammers better

Great, thank you! Hopefully this turns out to have been a one-time thing, at least in its severity. Appreciate y'all dealing with the flood.

[Integrity]

fully sick, the spammer overnight had the traits that would have gotten through the loophole and it didn't

[MeteorPhoenix]

I wonder what even the point is. Surely no one is clicking on those.

[lenticular]

6 hours ago, MeteorPhoenix said:

I wonder what even the point is. Surely no one is clicking on those.

Presumably they're for search engine optimisation. Google's algorithms see the links and think "oh, hey, people are linking to this page so it must be relevant and useful" and very slightly bumps it up how highly it gets shown in search results. Repeat across thousands of other places they're spamming at the same time, and it might actually make a difference. And if it doesn't, oh well, running a spam bot is cheap.