spammers, and rel='nofollow'

[code reader]

Something you could do to protect your own board is adding a protection that the other 'normal' boards do not have. It can be a very simpel question for example. Spammers don't have time to crack the protection for just your board.

i agree. my suggestion (i dont believe it is very original) for a "boilerplate" question will allow ALL board admins to add something unique to their own board, without needing to do any modding/programming.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

rel="nofollow" has been discussed before, and the example of Wordpress brought up: Wordpress uses rel="nofollow" in all links in comments, and yet it is still spammed like there's no tomorrow.

[NeoThermic]

The problem with spamming is not about search ranking anymore. It's about users clicking the links. Most spammers do it because they are paied by refferr or if their number is used when an action is done on the site that is linked. It isn't so much about search ranking as it is about making people click the link.

This is where CAPTCHA and other things (like the post moderation ability (and when 3.2 comes, combined with events could allow a powerfull anti-spam ability)) come into play. These are the real meat of anti-spam. For example, I've blocked over 2,700 registration attempts and well over 14,000 spam posts using a captcha. (a mash of many bits of experementing, and some pre-3.0 visual confirmation ideas ).

NeoThermic

[DavidMJ]

david, i am not sure you understand the rel='nofollow' thing.*
it has nothing to do with "scraping of indices", whatever that may be.
the "rel='nofollow' in a <a href='url'> tag, tells the search engines not to upgrade the URL rating.
most search engines do take it into consideration, so it removes one of the main reasons for spammers to spam: many (i would even say, most) spamming i see nowdays in phpbb boards is not done to get clicks, but rather to improve the target site google rating. rel='nofollow' will remove this motivation.

I'm not quite so sure you know what scrapping is. You know the index page? The thingy that says "Board Index" in English? index.php? with all of those categories and forums? Well unless you block *that* from google, enemy bots can get *that* and spider *that* on their own. They don't need google, google is just convenient.

randomization of names will make the bots both more difficult to make, and more specific: with the current phpbb registration form, the same bot can, without any change, register to an english, german, or indonesian boards, and it can be used regardless of the style used.
if you randomize the field names, the bot will be forced to analyze the form (which it doesnt have to do now), and will need to be updated whenever you change, say, the language strings that are used as field titles. and/or the order of the fields. also, the bot will have to be made specifically for the language (otherwise i can't see how it can analyze the form), and maybe even specifically to the style.

This just makes it a pain in the ass, it does not stop the guys who _really_ want to sell viagra. if the size of the market is large enough, they will sit down and write a bot that has to analyze the page.

CAPTCHA sweat shops make them pay money. I would rather force them to pay money then let them do it for free.

[code reader]

I'm not quite so sure you know what scrapping is. You know the index page? The thingy that says "Board Index" in English? index.php? with all of those categories and forums? Well unless you block *that* from google, enemy bots can get *that* and spider *that* on their own. They don't need google, google is just convenient.

you are right. i don't know what scrapping is. but it doesnt change the fact that you miss the point about rel='nofollow'. you seem to think that i am talking about hiding the site, while i am talking about preventing links posted in the site from contributing to the spmmaers' sites ranking.
read http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/01/ ... -spam.html" target="_blank

and just to clarify: i did not suggest to get rid of captcha. i just said that captcha is not enough, and it is possible that it will become less effective as time goes by.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

And we have pointed out that rel="nofollow" doesn't really stop spam.

[NeoThermic]

and just to clarify: i did not suggest to get rid of captcha. i just said that captcha is not enough, and it is possible that it will become less effective as time goes by.

A captcha is enough, trust me.

NeoThermic

[Highway of Life]

First,

What Capn and Neo said, the nofollow is pointless, AND I prefer NOT having the nofollow since the main boards I admin 80%+ of the content that goes in them is real articles and content, and not chat anyways. Plus it does help ranking if YOU don't allow the follow attribute.

Also, as David said, it does no good when you can easily scrape the page.

However, there may be a way around the second point, and that is the human registrations via Porn sites.
And that might be to disable hot-linking of images in a certain forum, or certain forums.
This is possible using a range of methods, one of which simply employs the use of .htaccess
You are still going to have trouble with spambots, but I have found that 99% of my spam comes from Guests, so if you either 1) disable guest posting or 2) allow guest posting but the post must be approved by a Moderator.
What the Dev team (namely David) has implemented as far as Captcha, along with the confirmation sent via email is going to cut down on the Spam.

Honestly, if you are still having a problem with spam even after all that, then you are not spending enough time on your own board, you need more moderators, or you need to increase the security settings. It's pretty simple.

Me, I would not change a thing... Devs, you guys have done a great job!!!

[Eelke]

Are we really going to repeat this discussion?

[Adric]

let me get this straight... You are saying that the spam on these boards to buy stuff for cell-phones and what not are not really an attempt for us to buy cell phone stuff, but just to increase the rating for these boards? Why then advertise stuff. They could just type "Spam" and not even bother typing anything else. Why would they care if this board has a higher rating?

Anywho, while i understand your idea about a "boilerplate" question, in many cases this would not be practical. Lets say i visit a board on dog care. I decide to register, and the question is, i don;t know, lets say "What is the name of the Admin's Dog"... Well, how would I know? And how would I find this out... The board I run has an easy way of deciding if they should be allowed to register --- If you aren't in the Guild, you can register and use the general board, but until you get approved for the "Guild Member" Group, you can't see any of the real board... And once you are approved, the general board is no longer visible, so that issue goes away as real members can't even see the spam that is being posted. So basicaly as you can see, it varies from case to case as to what admins can do on individual boards... And besides, as soon as the events system is implimented, it will be incredibly easy to ban and delete posts from such users...