SPURIOUS ENTRIES ON THIS WEB-SITE

[Mark Coxhead]

Hello Abosft

SPURIOUS ENTRIES ON THIS WEB-SITE

I have become increasingly concerned and frustrated about the growth of spurious and irrelevant postings appearing overnight on a daily basis.   As I have mentioned previously, these entries contain embedded links to dubious web-sites, detract considerably from value and importance of this esteemed forum.


Could you ask your web-designer to introduce an additional mandatory field for  new members?  My suggestion is that this should be their Absoft licence number that is validated – only genuine licence numbers should be accepted.


This would have the effect of excluding non-Absoft users from making postings, nevertheless the site is designed at those of us who use Absoft.    Any potential purchaser of Absoft products could be given a "guest" user-id via your Sales team once it is established their credentials are bone-fide. 



Hope this helps.   Thank you.

[Mark Pascale]

Seconded.  We do still need something.  The spam here does get very annoying at times (especially when they reply to valid messages), although it is removed quickly when we notify the moderator.  Allow non-Users to read but not to post ... without special authorization from Absoft.  This is supposed to be an Absoft USER Forum.

As an alternate for general Fortran interest, including Code interpretations and latest developments (F77, F90/95, F2003, F2008, etc.), the venerable c_l_f is very useful (includes a small amount of Absoft-specific Fortran); the spam there is cleared quickly without us having to notify anyone.  JISC also has infrequent and useful postings.

[forumadmin]

We remove the spam entries an a daily basis. The peak appears to be the weekends, but we removed over 40 today. We are in agreement that it is becoming increasingly annoying and are looking into several solutions. We will keep you posted.

[mecej4]

One set of suggestions to consider:

1. The first post by a newly signed up 'member' is put into a holding area that is visible only to people who are logged-in members.

2. These members (excluding the poster) may vote on-line as to whether the new post is spam or is on-topic.

3. If enough negative votes are cast within a certain time-frame, the post is deleted.

4. If a spammer posing as a new member attempts a second spam post, his/her membership is terminated after putting the IP number of the log-in into a black-list.

5. Termination of membership can only be appealed to the forum administrator, but there is no right to receive a response.

[forumadmin]

We have updated the forum software and now require that all new applications for accounts be approved by the system administrator. It is still possible for someone to get through, but the amount of spam should be significantly reduced.

[Mark Pascale]

Since it appears that we have had no new members in a couple weeks (since 30 June) or any new entries (since 10 July) maybe this is working.  However, a word of caution ... remember to accept valid new members who attempt to register.

When I co-moderated a different (non-Fortran) forum about five years ago, we used this same method to try to reduce the spam.  Unfortunately, the other (main) moderator did not have the time/interest to ever accept any new members ... that forum eventually died from lack of use.  I recognize the problem/headache.

[Mark Coxhead]

Mark, I concur with your comments.     Having generated the original complaint I suppose I feel some responsibility for the lack of postings in recent weeks.   It may be that the volume of spam was so great (including, as you say, postings to genuine messages) may have masked the lowish level of activity on the forum?


I have not looked at the revised “new user” procedure, but rather than have a complicated enrolment process just ask the new user to specify which programming languages he/she works with.    If F*****n is not given, then the application would be questionable.

Mark