(Mar. 25, 2014 5:01 AM)th!nk Wrote: Seeing as I said I'd post it here (and honestly I don't think it'd be too harmful for you to reply to it with your thoughts here either) - this is the plugin I was talking about. Quite configurable it seems: http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthread.php?tid=1006
It looks a bit work in progress-ish in that initial post but I don't think that's been updated that recently, and I've read a lot of good things about it.
I don't know why you are so indelicate with words, I just expressed my opinion, aren't forum born for this reason?
However...I already know it, I used to use some plugin from here. Have you read the source or, at least, accurately read the description of what the plugin do? I'm not so sure about this.
"How does this plugin work?
When a user tries to post a new thread or reply, or edit a post, the plugin will check whether the user passes a number of thresholds (such as post count) and if so, deems the user "safe" and stops there.
If the user fails to pass the threshold test, the main Spamalyser engine kicks in and analyses the post to determine a "spam weighting" (likeliness of it being spam). It then compares this weighting against some configurable action thresholds to decide on whether it should do anything to the post. If the weighting meets the thresholds, Spamalyser can currently (depending on what you enable):
Report the post,
Unapprove the post, or
Block the post (displays an error when user tries to submit the post)
All weighting calculations are logged and can be viewed via ACP -> Tools -> Spamalyser Log
How is the "spam weighting" calculated?
Quite a number of means, but most of the code is link analysis. Spammers ultimately want to post links, so it seems like a good place to start. Every link posted will add to the weighting, and links with similar keywords or to the same domain get penalised more heavily.
Spamalyser can also make some judgements based on the poster's online time and other factors, and has a number of features to attempt to reduce the number of false positives (for example, by examining the user's previous posts).
External lookups to services such as Stop Forum Spam and Akismet are also supported, and you can specify the amount of weighting to give to these services.
You can try looking in the Spamalyser settings which show all the methods used by this plugin to detect spam."
If you read carefully you will see that it, briefly, do what I've said in the posts before, it scan every post (I think that you can also choose in wich sub-forums it works), than it analyzes links, than you have the choice:
Report the post,
Unapprove the post,
Block the post, but I am going to come back on this later.
"spam weighting" -> "Spammers ultimately want to post links, so it seems like a good place to start. Every link posted will add to the weighting, and links with similar keywords or to the same domain get penalised more heavily." Ok, this can be useful, but anyway it can create problems when an user posts. "Spamalyser can also make some judgements based on the poster's online time and other factors, and has a number of features to
attempt to reduce the number of false positives (for example, by examining the user's previous posts)." So, what about the false positives, mh? "External lookups to services such as Stop Forum Spam and Akismet are also supported, and you can specify the amount of weighting to give to these services." With this I'm happy, this is a great function, and it can reduce dramatically the false positives, but before we can exult we have to persuade the committee to use that two plugin, one of which I have already suggested to Kai-V.
I conclude with:
Limitations
-The plugin assumes that MyCode is always enabled (so only detects [url] type links), which is probably in-line with the assumptions made by most spammers
-Google searching behaviour is somewhat erratic - it's a bit difficult to generate a representative search query from a post. Can be tweaked, though I'm not too worried because spammers can theoretically bypass this by slightly varying their posts across forums
-Reports currently only go to the database regardless of what reporting medium you have selected
...where no explanations are necessary.
So, basically, what it does:
Report the post -> Quite useless and annoying, isn't it?
Unapprove the post -> Quite annoying if it happens to an user instead of a bot, isn't it?
Block the post -> Very quite annoying if it happens to an user instead of a bot, isn't it?
So, IMHO this plugin is quite good at what it does, but I'm not at all sure that it is what WBO needs, at least it is quite useless and annoying alone. However, the committee can test it and and assess whether it is worth using it (because it could be worth it if used correctly, but only if false positives can be reduced to zero... meh, quite impossible but we can always try, as long as that does not cause inconvenience to users. We have a lot of users but if they encounter problems they could always decide to leave).
th!nk, we are a community, and we have to give our best for the progress of the community, because if it benefits the community it benefits us all, remember this next time before posting annoying phrases with appearances offensive like "and honestly I don't think it'd be too harmful for you to reply to it with your thoughts here either", everyone is free to express their thoughts. I personally have been very polite and cooperative with you, so I just do not understand why you were so rude. Anyway thanks for listening to me (well, for reading me)
EDIT: I misunderstood what th!nk wanted to say with "and honestly I don't think it'd be too harmful for you to reply to it with your thoughts here either", everything is ok!