Why Allow Titles Starting https:// ?

Hey Del, what'a a "tittle"?

If you have to ask... you are too young to know
Del

And if you are too old you forgot ...

A tittle is a tiny amount or part of something. It is also the dot above a lower case i.

I came across this word a short while ago and guess what? ... I Googled it!

Tony, with a lot of tongue in cheek for this post!

Several times I almost suggested that. But, the spammers would just switch to something else and get in anyway. With http titles it is fast and easy for us to skip past them.

I have been other places on the internet where your first 2 or 3 postings don't go up until a moderator has checked them. A little bit annoying when you post for the first time but it is very effective.

Something else that could be done is to have a pool of junior deputy moderators. If a junior deputy moderator hits the "REPORT" button and has "SPAM" in the report message text (server code change required) then the posting would come down until a full moderator does his/her final administrator thing. (If the postings are in a database with a straight forward design then this might be possible with a cron job that doesn't touch the server code.)

It could just be a respect thing. How can you expect spammers to respect us when we discarded the instructions for removing a cast iron bathtub? That was our most valuable thread and we just threw it away.

Bruce

P.S. Where's Roger Pink? He would know what to do in a situation like this!

As a proud member of the "Spam Killers", I'd like to inform you we already have that...

<...Del's magic anti spam pills...> Ugh! More pills adverts...

No, leave them. It instantly identifies the post as junk.

Otherwise I might accidentally click on it.

To pull back the curtain a little bit...

First, that is a good idea Del and we will make note of it for our next CR4 mods and admins meeting.

The moderators and admins hate the spam as much as the rest of CR4. We're the ones who end up policing it anyway. We've had some progress by tightening up our spam filters and making more helpful moderator tools, but it still requires frequent human eyes to determine spam and handle it.

We've had some innovative ideas previously, but we felt they would impair engagement besides crack down on spam. As with anything, it is about trade-offs. We also would need to formally request the resources from IEEE-GS.

Of course we are open to community suggestions. But please don't think we don't care about CR4 quality!

Happy to answer any questions, sans pitchforks.

Erm ... if we blocked all URLs with https:// we'd be blocking a goodly number of websites. IEEE GS had to switch to the https protocol earlier this year because it's more secure than http and thus the new standard.

We do automatically block some sites and we do our best with the spam filters. The company has way more technical stuff to do than we have staff to do it. We're expecting that situation to improve over the next few months and that CR4 will be one of the beneficiaries. That said, when Del's magic spam pills are available for export, let us know!

.... but Del is not suggesting blocking the sites, only filtering threads with "https://" at the beginning of the tittle [sic].

Ah, OK -- duh. It's still conceivable but less likely we'd block a legit site.

I still like the idea of Del's anti-spam pills. He could make a fortune.

I still think that requiring a CAPTCHA for posters with postings < N (say N=10) would alleviate the problem. Invariably, the number of postings for this spam is 1. Most of this garbage is machine generated.

A number of years ago I presented a proposal that posts from first time users be quarantined until they could be reviewed by Adm. However, nothing ever came of it.

Probably still being reviewed..