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#1 2008-12-12 13:01:55

andresmh
Scratch Team at MIT
Registered: 2007-03-05
Posts: 1000+

Disabling signatures

Unfortunately some people external to our community are abusing the Scratch forums and using the  signatures to post links to websites with inappropriate content. These are professional spammers that are typically paid to do this kind of thing. It's very sad, but we are going to have to disable signatures on the forums :-( I'm so sorry!


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#2 2008-12-12 13:10:03

Zelda123
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-11-21
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

That's too bad. Couldn't you make it so that forum moderators and the Scratch Team could go around and disable only the inappropriate signatures, just like projects?

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#3 2008-12-12 13:14:41

andresmh
Scratch Team at MIT
Registered: 2007-03-05
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

Yes, we are trying to do that, there has been a surge of spammers that we cannot keep up them. I am thinking that with the holidays the moderators and the rest of the team are going to be having to spend less time and the problem might exacerbate. Additionally we only look at content that has been flagged and since signatures cannot be flagged then its a lot harder to find the inappropriate ones. If we had more people and/or more developers we could come up with better solutions, but we are very limited in both of those.


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#4 2008-12-12 13:19:24

Dan01
Scratcher
Registered: 2008-06-11
Posts: 100+

Re: Disabling signatures

andresmh wrote:

Yes, we are trying to do that, there has been a surge of spammers that we cannot keep up them. I am thinking that with the holidays the moderators and the rest of the team are going to be having to spend less time and the problem might exacerbate. Additionally we only look at content that has been flagged and since signatures cannot be flagged then its a lot harder to find the inappropriate ones. If we had more people and/or more developers we could come up with better solutions, but we are very limited in both of those.

I'd gladly help in flagging signatures if I ever saw one. Maybe make a topic where people post if they think that someones signatures is inapproiate. Please don't take away signatures, they are one of the main ways of getting people to view your project.


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#5 2008-12-12 13:28:52

andresmh
Scratch Team at MIT
Registered: 2007-03-05
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

But having that topic would just advertise more those people and their signatures, which is exactly what the spammers want...


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#6 2008-12-12 13:31:33

archmage
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-05-18
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

Maybe you could make it so that you can only have signatures if you have a certain number of forum posts or projects. Most spamers have no projects and very few posts.

Not to mention, that if a person has made 50 or so posts you can see if they intend to sell you stuff or something unwanted like that. I don't think that spamers would put in the effort to make 50 forum posts to make 1 or 2 posts to advertise their own things.

Last edited by archmage (2008-12-12 13:36:03)


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#7 2008-12-12 13:36:54

andresmh
Scratch Team at MIT
Registered: 2007-03-05
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

Yeah, that would be a good solution archmage. Who can help us implement it and test it? It shouldn't be that hard, it's just PHP code. I can share the source code for the forums with whoever can help.


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#8 2008-12-12 15:47:09

JSO
Community Moderator
Registered: 2007-06-23
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

I understand. However it's painful to hear  smile  (I spent a lot of time creating that JSO banner and fitting it within 400 characters :S )

I don't know enough php to do such kind of thing, but it shouldn't be too hard. Just add it on the profile page - when a user has less then 50 posts he/she is not allowed to post a sig. It is actually just copy-pasting, the post count is displayed somewhere on the profile page...


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#9 2008-12-12 22:40:05

andresmh
Scratch Team at MIT
Registered: 2007-03-05
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

After JSO put it in such simple terms I was inspired and decided to spend no more than 1 hr in doing the change. It turned out to take just a few minutes. Thanks JSO!  smile

I changed the code so the signature would be displayed only accounts with more than 50 posts. Let me know if it works well and hopefully I didn't break anything.


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#10 2008-12-12 23:04:03

archmage
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-05-18
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

andresmh wrote:

After JSO put it in such simple terms I was inspired and decided to spend no more than 1 hr in doing the change. It turned out to take just a few minutes. Thanks JSO!  smile

I changed the code so the signature would be displayed only accounts with more than 50 posts. Let me know if it works well and hopefully I didn't break anything.

It works, also you should update the FAQ to explain why some people won't get sigs.


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#11 2008-12-13 04:10:51

JSO
Community Moderator
Registered: 2007-06-23
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

I posted a new topic in the FAQ:

http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=82208

Admins and other moderators, If it is incorrect, please edit the post...


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#12 2008-12-13 06:32:03

MartinWollenweber
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-04-10
Posts: 100+

Re: Disabling signatures

JSO wrote:

I  don't know enough php to do such kind of thing, but it shouldn't be too hard. Just add it on the profile page - when a user has less then 50 posts he/she is not allowed to post a sig. It is actually just copy-pasting, the post count is displayed somewhere on the profile page...

andresmh wrote:

After JSO put it in such simple terms I was inspired and decided to spend no more than 1 hr in doing the change. It turned out to take just a few minutes. Thanks JSO!  smile

Great solution! Thank you both! You can see: It's often valuable to let multiple people think about a solution before rejecting an idea or immediately start programming.


Martin
...mitmachen beim  DACH-Scratch-Wiki und Scratch-Wiki-Autor werden!

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#13 2008-12-13 09:22:06

Jens
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-06-04
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

Brilliant! (does this count as post?  wink  )


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#14 2008-12-13 10:42:06

Zelda123
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-11-21
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

With no use of signatures, won't these people just create posts to advertise instead?

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#15 2008-12-13 10:45:12

andresmh
Scratch Team at MIT
Registered: 2007-03-05
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

Zelda123 wrote:

With no use of signatures, won't these people just create posts to advertise instead?

Yes, that can happen, but at least you all can help us by flagging those posts.


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#16 2008-12-14 05:42:57

Toasty
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-07-01
Posts: 500+

Re: Disabling signatures

So if I had 30 posts before you disabled it, once I get 50 posts will I get a signiture again?


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#17 2008-12-14 08:25:21

JSO
Community Moderator
Registered: 2007-06-23
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

Toasty wrote:

So if I had 30 posts before you disabled it, once I get 50 posts will I get a signiture again?

Yes...


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#18 2008-12-14 11:29:25

Toasty
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-07-01
Posts: 500+

Re: Disabling signatures

All those full stops make me suspicious


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#19 2008-12-14 14:17:22

Zelda123
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-11-21
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

Won't this encourage these people to make even more posts advertising other websites? Then once they get 50 posts, they can advertise in many double that amount. Or do you think that these people will not find 50 minutes of their time worth a lot of advertising?

Also, if there is an inappropriate signature, is it ok to flag a post by that person, typing the reason as "Inappropriate Signature?"

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#20 2008-12-14 17:06:10

Paddle2See
Scratch Team
Registered: 2007-10-27
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

Zelda123 wrote:

Also, if there is an inappropriate signature, is it ok to flag a post by that person, typing the reason as "Inappropriate Signature?"

I think that would work just fine.


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#21 2008-12-15 09:27:50

Lightnin
Scratch Team
Registered: 2008-11-03
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

Zelda123 wrote:

Won't this encourage these people to make even more posts advertising other websites? Then once they get 50 posts, they can advertise in many double that amount. Or do you think that these people will not find 50 minutes of their time worth a lot of advertising?

Seems like all the time it would take to post 50 spams to reach the point where one could have a sig with more spam is a lot of a time to invest, especially if once the user is id'ed as a spammer, their whole account / posts can be erased.

It's all a numbers game with spammers. When we make it cost more of their time and effort to spam us, they are more likely to choose to spend their energy somewhere else and to leave us alone.  The tricky part is how to make it hard for them but still easy for all us real Scratchers.

I think this is a really good solution to a difficult problem - props to the Scratch community and Andres for making it happen!


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#22 2008-12-15 12:16:16

AFawcett
Scratcher
Registered: 2008-08-29
Posts: 27

Re: Disabling signatures

It'll take me ages to get 50 posts and have a signicture  sad  (I've only 9 posts)


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#23 2008-12-15 12:46:14

JSO
Community Moderator
Registered: 2007-06-23
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

AFawcett wrote:

It'll take me ages to get 50 posts and have a signicture  sad  (I've only 9 posts)

It doesn't really matters.

A signature is not necessary, but it was used by spammers to harm the Scratch community.


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#24 2008-12-15 14:10:28

Toasty
Scratcher
Registered: 2007-07-01
Posts: 500+

Re: Disabling signatures

Sigs are great ways to express yourself, and once you have 50 posts you will probably know enough about Scratch to have a cool one


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#25 2008-12-21 10:56:26

andresmh
Scratch Team at MIT
Registered: 2007-03-05
Posts: 1000+

Re: Disabling signatures

I am closing this topic now. Feel free to comment on: http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=82208


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