What's the point of probation?

[cvrle77]

This would prevent legit introductions, where people want to show off their site, and their work. We are not against it, as long as it's not in spammy way, without saying even "hello" to the community.
Also, this doesn't mean, that cvv bots won't use just a regular text like somesite.com, without hyperlinking it.
I saw this numerous times. No links, just plain text, but site is still mentioned.

[Froomple]

at least the length of the threads ?
Cause, these spammy threads are usually very big. Might work IMO.

[Suhel]

To stop spam I guess, I think probation member also have captcha

[Prig]

A few things...

Taking care of a forum is difficult at times, especially when you have hundreds of new signups daily. The most important thing that should be on everyone's mind is member retention. When a new user comes to a board and sees spam, that's not a good look, and could possibly entice him to do the same. When a member has his threads spammed time and time again, it's not so good for the community. When you run a community you need to run it efficiently. There are no excuses for this, because there are many simple solutions available.

• You implement a moderation tool for new members. This will be done on the Admin side. This moderation tool will allow you to set various settings based on post count. Also you can manipulate the settings to include strings such as; visit <link>. If a new member posts a link within his first X Posts, it would be set to moderation. The member automatically thinks his post went through - so not to deter him from continuing to post. However, his thread will not appear until a member of the staff approves or denies it.

• Removing the "probation" term. It's unprofessional and not necessary. Everyone who is new, knows that they are new. There is no need to slap them with a label like "Probation". Very corny... All eyes are on the new guy to begin with. New Member is much better and makes your new real members happy.

This is a sophisticated community, built on helping others. It needs to help itself first internally. I know most of the modifications installed on here, and what I am talking about is already installed. However, it will take the willingness of someone on the staff to step up and say "I will be the one to moderate the new member posts that are sent to moderation review". If nobody is willing to do this, then this problem will remain.

+1 Froomple

[PacketFreak]

I agree with Cvrle77, spammers are pretty easy to control and in most cases their posts are deleted on active boards within minutes. As soon as a mod see's it or it is reported it takes only one click to ban the user and delete all his/her posts. I believe the probation part is a little stupid as it deters new members from from posting and being an active member. Limiting new members to only create one thread is not smart..if I am a new member I probably stumbled on this site because I am a new webmaster or need help with something. I may have questions on Servers/Design/Advertising etc... I am not going to hang around for a week to post for the help I need.. I will simply go to another webmaster forum and request the help i need get everything done at once.

[Prig]

Here's the problem. There is absolutely no reason for spammers to have success here on KWWH. Whether their post is published for one minute or one hour. It shouldn't be posted. Period. There is no way to stop spam from happening, it comes in multiple forms, bots and individuals. However, believe me when I say you can slow it down when you impose real modifications that are aimed at preventing spammers.

Imagine 99.9% of the forum spam free to the visible eye. Wouldn't that be lovely? It's very possible.

[PacketFreak]

Should have mentioned I agree with your post

Would be much better to reduce spam without deterring new users from posting.

[cvrle77]

Staff will never manually approve posts here. We already have so much tasks we do, that we don't need such a heavy burden.

You have to understand that this is not just random regular type forum, this is webmasters forum. Most of so called webmasters are the actual spammers, and know all the tricks, and invent new ones.

Problem here is, that when you have too much staff, you can't monitor them properly, when you have too little staff, forum is suffering.
We're not dealing only with spam, there's so many tasks I do daily, that needing to approve hundreds of topics daily, or monitor staff that approves new threads, would just make more burden on me. Take a note, that every moderator is doing his part in his free time.

Actually, there's little to no problem with spam here. It's not a top priority, because there's active staff on board, which is handling that within seconds/minutes. Most of the time, you never even notice that there's a spam thread posted, and user already dealth with. This is isolated incident, and I don't think we will, because of one small incident, take some new rigorous measures, and put new burden on staff.