PaulStoffregen
Well-known member
Just yesterday I installed this Crowd Moderation add-on, which should give us something similar to a mod we had on vBulletin. It's currently set to remove a message from public view after 3 reports. Before yesterday reported spam only got removed when I happened to log in with the admin account (which I've been doing a couple time each day for these last couple weeks... but long term I'm hoping to spend more time on helping actual people and writing code and less time on server admin stuff).
The old system was set to send a message to moderation queue with only 1 report. We really needed that low threshold since so much spam was getting through vBulletin's feeble defences. But in hindsight, only 1 report meant a small but non-zero number of poorly written messages ended up getting censored, like the sometimes inflammatory messages Frank wrote from his sock puppet account. I really can't fault people for reporting that sort of thing. But the goal has always been to allow unplesant feedback, and thankfully the number of non-spam incidents has been so low that we haven't needed to really worry too much. I'm hopeful the new threshold of 3 reports will still quickly wipe spam from everyone's public view, and also provide some safety margin so we don't end up censoring unplesant non-spam messages.
We had some customization for "Senior member+" on vBulletin. So far I must admit I haven't really looked at whether that stuff imported correctly. Truth is, unless someone tells me we have a problem, I'm probably not going to spent time on it.
The other thing we lost was the IP numbers block list. I considered trying to dig through the old database backup to find it. But maybe losing it and starting over wasn't such a bad thing. Every day I've been watching the many failed spam attempts and blocking IP ranges. Where spam originates seems to have changed. Years ago we got hit every day by what appeared to be armies of low wage at-home workers, mostly from India and Bangladesh. Today it's mostly Russia and Vietnam, and various VPN gateways.
XenForo has a feature to discourage troublesome users and IP numbers. I turned off all its site-breaking features and I'm using it now as the primary way we block bad IP numbers. Anyone who happens to be using a "discouraged" IP range can still view the site and even use it normally, if they've previously registered. But spammers (and normal people) using those IP numbers can't register. Maybe some IP ranges should just be completely blocked from any access to the site, but I'm hopeful this lighter touch that only blocks new registrations will work out.
The good news is XenForo integrates automatically with servies like Stop Forum Spam and Project Honey Pot which is blocking dozens of spammer registration attempts every day. I've been watching pretty closely and adding repeat offending IP ranges to the block or discourage lists. XenForo also has much better IP blocking, where it shows the date each block was created and when (if) it last prevented that IP number/range from access. The ~500 ranges I've added over these last couple weeks are indeed blocking a lot of repeat spam attempts. Hopefully we'll continue seeing very low spam levels getting through, which lessens the need for reports and manual effort.
