Waiting For Forum Posting Moderation Isn't Fun

[DasFox]

I've been into computing around 20 years and in that time I have been on the internet on average 40-70 hours a week, but in the last 10 years, working as a professional IT Tech it has been almost 24/7, well not quite, just kidding, but honestly, about 70 hours a week.

I know the Internet like the back of my hand, I mean who wouldn't after all these hours and years, hehe...

I'm a Geek and a Tech and I do know for a fact that waiting on forum post moderation is a very small majority in the world of online forums and it's really disappointing to see this.

Why, well when signing up it should of been made to avoid spam bots and it has and then, for such a specific forum such as this, an OS X application, also a very small forum too, there shouldn't really be that many problems that people need to have their posts looked over like we are all a bunch of little kids.

This is a community, it's a two way street the makers and the followers, the makers being the people who made the forum and the followers, the community who comes and joins your house...

For starters, give people the benefit of the doubt first, then you moderate them later when they have proven they can't be trusted, but now you are telling me, without even knowing who I am that you need to check me out first. That's called being Guilty first, proven innocent later and that's really sad...

In the real world of GEEK computing this is not cool!

I'm a Geek and I take offense to making a post and then having someone tell me I need to check you out first before posting, especially a forum like this, meaning a computer software forum, specific to a need by an OS...

This isn't some sex fest Dalnet IRC channel, if that was the case then I can really see the point, but honestly if you have that much trouble around here, then boy someone certainly has you targeted for spam..

You can certainly do what you want, it's your forum, but if you want me around as a geek participating and being a part of this community then I expect that I'm first, given the benefit of the doubt by being treated as a new member by not having this type of enforcement!

Also, by the time someone has already moderated the post, there could of been already a half dozen replies to help on a situation where someone needs help, NOW...

Moderating makes us wait longer then we have to, and in the world of technology, when I ask a question, I'm looking for an answer as soon as possible, after all this is the computer world, not the Coconut Express, or a SLOW boat Sailing to China if you catch my meaning here.

PLUS these are all PAYING customers, and this is certainly no way to treat paying customers who need help now by making them wait any longer then they have to.

I hope you will approve this post and put it up!


THANKS

[James]

Hi DasFox,

I started typing up a reply, but before hitting the Submit button I decided we'll turn off moderation for the time being and see if the spammers leave us alone for a while. I've included the reply below anyway so you know the back story.

--
Tell us about it - we hate it as well. However I think you misunderstand why we have moderation turned on, and to what extent it applies.

Firstly, it only applies to your first post. Once you have had at least one forum post approved you can post all that you want without approval. Moderation is ONLY in place to stop spammers, hence why moderation is turned off once you have at least one post on the forums.

As for a bit of back story, these forums have always had a Captcha in place that stopped most spam. This worked just fine until late last year/early this year when spammers decided to take forum spamming seriously. We went from around a couple of spammer accounts being created a week to 50-100 being created a DAY. And we were not alone - the PhpBB community forums are filled with forum administrators seeing the same thing.

Initially we assumed that ReCaptcha had been broken, and tried switching to a few others, all of which did nothing in stopping the onslaught. At this point first-post only moderation was turned on as a stop-gap measure.

Eventually we turned to the simply maths/equation style captcha you see today (we changed it a bit as well), which is highly effective at stopping these bots. However unfortunately we still get one or two spammers a day - who are probably humans. We've left moderation on so we can deal with these before they appear publicly (it looks pretty bad for a support forum to have sex pills and WoW gold posts plastered everywhere). We'll see how things go over the coming months, but we don't intend to leave moderation on if we can help it.
--

Cheers,
James

[DasFox]

Hi James,

Well I apologize for being hasty in my posting without realizing the extent of the moderation.

So please don't turn it off, in fact leave it one for around 10-20 posts, then this will hopefully really curb the spammers...

I can't believe you have received this much spamming, really crazy...


THANKS

[DasFox]

I came back here after posting and I have like 5 posts, yet the forum is still telling me I need to wait for moderation...

Something broke?


THANKS

[James]

I came back here after posting and I have like 5 posts, yet the forum is still telling me I need to wait for moderation...

Something broke?

Ugh, yes, my attempt to turn it off made it worse! I'll have another play!

Cheers,
James

[DasFox]

Ok thanks...


P.S. Yeah it works!