Hi all. Firstly i hope this is in the right place, Admins will sort it if not. I just noticed that there are 2 members and over 400 visitors to this site. Thats great and welcome. Just came for a look around did you, terrific. Great site and you will learn a lot. Good people here only too willing to help. Now for the folks who know little about Linux, it is actually easy to get your head around it for the most part. Mint would have to be the best to start out on. It was my first distro and after trying many others i returned to Mint. It just fits. Initially with me i sort of feared so many distros in Linux, and all that software that goes with them. Well i soon found out that the majority of the additional software fitted most of the distros. It is Linux, very similar for the most part. It may appear confusing but it really is not. Well thats enough from me for today. So why not become a member. Join us and ask those questions. You will learn very quickly, i promise.
Visitors
- Thread starter noelw
- Start date
The more visitors the better, but they can't ask questions...as you need to be a member to post...so the best thing to do is join this friendly Forum.
Some people think Linux Mint is a beginners Distro...which is not true, just because it's user friendly and very stable. You don't have to move to another Distro once you learn a bit about Mint...you can use it for ever if you like.
Some people think Linux Mint is a beginners Distro...which is not true, just because it's user friendly and very stable. You don't have to move to another Distro once you learn a bit about Mint...you can use it for ever if you like.
Brickwizard
Well-Known Member
Noel
as I type this we are showing 411 visitors, of those approx one third are bots and two thirds presumed human. Unless the management of the site decided to go member's only, I personally doubt, that anything we say will make much difference to the number of humans browsing the site, deciding to join.
You're being a cynic, Brian 
I last made an announcement in Site Announcements on Dec 1 2021 that we had passed 50,000 Members.
Now we are at 73,375.
That's 25 new Members per day. If 2/3 of the Guests are human, that is a figure of nearly 9% conversion success.
That's good by any standards.
Just for being friendly and knowledgeable.
Avagudweegend, all.
I last made an announcement in Site Announcements on Dec 1 2021 that we had passed 50,000 Members.
Now we are at 73,375.
That's 25 new Members per day. If 2/3 of the Guests are human, that is a figure of nearly 9% conversion success.
That's good by any standards.
Just for being friendly and knowledgeable.
Avagudweegend, all.
Brickwizard
Well-Known Member
the prerogative of old menYou're being a cynic, Brian
enjoy your weekend [have a tinnie for me]
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
....present company excluded, of course ....
I hope the other 13 new members we get today will have a better spammer-to-real user ratio than we had this morning (from 8:30am-11:00am CDT). It's not always as bad as this (9 of 12 = 75%), but it does seem to be getting worse. I hope that someday @Rob will implement some kind of controls to stop them.
The site does automatically put some new users into the moderation queue if they meet certain criteria, which I won’t list here because I don’t want to give any spammers/scammers any clues.
So we mods/admins are able to decline, ban, or spam-clean new users who have been flagged by that system if we think they are extremely likely to be scammers/spammers. And anybody who makes the mistake of posting spam here is spam-cleaned by us. So we are able to catch a lot of scammers/spammers.
I don’t think we need to go to the extreme of moderating every single new user that joins up. That would just be a lot of work.
We always seem to get a lot of new users who join and then never post anything. Perhaps they’ve joined and are inactive because they don’t have any questions at the moment. Maybe they’ve recently switched to Linux or are thinking about switching and have signed up here in case they do need to ask questions. Which is entirely their right. It’s definitely a shame that more new users don’t take part in the active community here.
But as we’ve seen, some of those inactive accounts are spammers biding their time until they decide to post spam. But how do we know which users are which?
Until they start posting, we simply don’t know.
The moderation queue does capture a lot of spammer signups and spam posts though. And for any that do slip that semi-automated net, we have the “report" functionality, which allows the community to report posts that are considered spam, or that break the rules of the site.
Until I became a moderator, I had no idea how many spam accounts and spam posts we were getting per day. Some days we get more spam in the moderation queue than others. But it’s not unmanageable at the moment.
So we mods/admins are able to decline, ban, or spam-clean new users who have been flagged by that system if we think they are extremely likely to be scammers/spammers. And anybody who makes the mistake of posting spam here is spam-cleaned by us. So we are able to catch a lot of scammers/spammers.
I don’t think we need to go to the extreme of moderating every single new user that joins up. That would just be a lot of work.
We always seem to get a lot of new users who join and then never post anything. Perhaps they’ve joined and are inactive because they don’t have any questions at the moment. Maybe they’ve recently switched to Linux or are thinking about switching and have signed up here in case they do need to ask questions. Which is entirely their right. It’s definitely a shame that more new users don’t take part in the active community here.
But as we’ve seen, some of those inactive accounts are spammers biding their time until they decide to post spam. But how do we know which users are which?
Until they start posting, we simply don’t know.
The moderation queue does capture a lot of spammer signups and spam posts though. And for any that do slip that semi-automated net, we have the “report" functionality, which allows the community to report posts that are considered spam, or that break the rules of the site.
Until I became a moderator, I had no idea how many spam accounts and spam posts we were getting per day. Some days we get more spam in the moderation queue than others. But it’s not unmanageable at the moment.
Brickwizard
Well-Known Member
Morning Jason
as it stands, the system works fairly well, what the auto system may miss, one of us regulars will normally pick up and report,
Exactly!
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
We regulars have occasional fun, doing just that
I do wish there were a way to weed out the 'sleepers', hidden away in our member list.
I guess they exist in members lists for most forums
I do wish there were a way to weed out the 'sleepers', hidden away in our member list.
I guess they exist in members lists for most forums
I personally don't like creating too many accounts just for the sake of it. I register when I need to ask something.
Many just come to have a look, read, hope to find what they need, if not they'll go elsewhere or ask after joining.
There are some forums I once registered on and never went back, so a number of registered members doesn't need to mean much either.
Linux is getting more attention these days so we can expect more people exploring the topic.
Many just come to have a look, read, hope to find what they need, if not they'll go elsewhere or ask after joining.
There are some forums I once registered on and never went back, so a number of registered members doesn't need to mean much either.
Linux is getting more attention these days so we can expect more people exploring the topic.
Absolutely right. I believe this should be an automated task.
Each of the 9 spammers in my screencap above posted spam URL's in the homepage section of their user profile, so they are actually easily identified. The problem is that those URL's by new users are not flagged and put in the moderation queue... or else you and the other mods here would be deleting them quickly and easily every day, along with the other spam.
That is what I would like to see from @Rob.... flag those URL's just the same as they are flagged when URL's are posted in a thread by any new user, so the mods don't have to try to play whack-a-mole with them. The mods would easily recognize the difference between a spammer URL and a real user posting a real personal homepage. That's what I think is the easy fix. It adds a little to the workload of the mods, but it doesn't ask you to check every new user who signs up.
Even better maybe... disable the ability to enter a homepage in user profiles entirely. That's a bit of a disservice to a few of the legitimate users here, maybe, but stopping spammers for the greater good of the forum would seem to be worth it to me. I think this ought to be easy for XenForo (it really should!), or at least a plugin may do it.
Even better maybe... develop a maintenance script to query/purge the forum database of users who post spammy URL's in their personal profiles. This would need care to not purge legitimate users too, but it should not be that hard for someone with database skills to create an appropriate query to identify these spammers. Something like,
"homepage_URL=true AND user_location=Vietnam" would be quite a start, but I'd guess there are better ways.I've talked privately with Chris @wizardfromoz about this before, but these things are not within his powers. Only @Rob can possibly achieve this goal, if he will take the interest, and if the XenForo software provides any of the options I am asking about.
9 of 12 new users being spammers was exceptional, but I usually see 4-5 every morning. Let's say 5 spammers per day, times 365 days, equals 1,825 spammers every year if they are not caught. Maybe more, maybe less... but it's a lot, and it's been this way for years. Every once in awhile it bugs the crap out of me, like now. So, I'm sorry for complaining, but I hope that it will one day be addressed.
My thanks to all of you who keep this site running! Cheers!
Thunderpants
Member
I suspect quite a lot of members are 'read only' by default and log in only when they have something to contribute. This would distort a snapshot member count.
Brickwizard
Well-Known Member
As a member interested in keeping the site safe for everybody , I look at new members, for obvious scammers, but many members do use their company/personal creds to sign in, which can make it difficult at times, but if I suspect any of them I try to keep an eye on them for all our benefits, [I am sure the team will confirm, I and others have tagged some first post which look innocuous to many, but smack of potential spammer to me,] we cannot expect the mods/admin to monitor things 24 hrs a day given time difference. @Rob may own the site @wizardfromoz ,@KGIII ,@JasKinasis, may be the mod team, but the site is for the use of all members and a little of our time to keep it clean and friendly cannot but help them.
Sorry, this is not meant to be a lecture as, I know you, like I, appreciate this forum ,but they are my personal opinions.
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
If you have just come across this thread, and skimmed over the various postings.......read this one AGAIN
@Rob
@Rob
From research, you can actually expect about 90% of your traffic to be bots - both good and bad. The more popular the site, the more bots are attracted to it. For example, Google will spider the site with multiple bots at the same time just because the site ranks well for some key words and because the site is mostly UGC (User Generated Content) with rapid updates. UGC gets indexed fast and often.
Then, you have bad bots and bad actors. That's going to be about 1/3 of your traffic, about a third of the bots - or higher if it's a juicy target.
There are a zillion bots spidering and indexing the site constantly. This isn't just public search engines. It's even spidered by research companies.
Then, you have bad bots and bad actors. That's going to be about 1/3 of your traffic, about a third of the bots - or higher if it's a juicy target.
There are a zillion bots spidering and indexing the site constantly. This isn't just public search engines. It's even spidered by research companies.
truckerDave
Well-Known Member
In regards to spam posts...
What would be the downside to having programming added to automatically hide a post after a set amount of members report it? Then a moderator, whenever they are available, could reinstate the post if it's not spam. Or break out the Big Ole Ban Hammer and start swinging. Just a thought.
What would be the downside to having programming added to automatically hide a post after a set amount of members report it? Then a moderator, whenever they are available, could reinstate the post if it's not spam. Or break out the Big Ole Ban Hammer and start swinging. Just a thought.
To further demonstrate my complaint.... here we are less than a week later with another 9-spammer morning. The screencap was at 9:30am CDT this morning. A few remain on the Newest Members list as I write this at 4:00pm CDT.
Here are links to the About page for each spammer so you can see their homepage spam links (unless one of the mods spam-cleans them). These are in order left to right, top to bottom, on the screencap.
https://www.linux.org/members/v9betesq.182139/#about
https://www.linux.org/members/sofiajoseph1233.182132/#about
https://www.linux.org/members/thabetglass.182131/#about
https://www.linux.org/members/sky88downloadd.182130/#about
https://www.linux.org/members/skyfarerules.182129/#about
https://www.linux.org/members/five88earth.182128/#about
https://www.linux.org/members/ole777to.182126/#about
https://www.linux.org/members/vn8823468.182125/#about
https://www.linux.org/members/hello88bingo.182122/#about
These don't seem hard to identify. If people post a company URL for anything other than technology related websites, I'd call it spam.... with exceptions if the user actually posts comments or questions for help. Spammers will sometimes post comments too, as we've seen, but it is far more common just to drop the URL and never return.
