Spam

On another American forum that I have just joined (nothing to do with photography) they have fairly elaborate procedures in place to ensure that nobody joins in order to post spam.

All initial posts have to checked by a moderator, before they appear on the forum.

All initial posts are checked for content, so if someone asks an obvious question such as what battery does a K5 use or posts something about the weather, these posts don't make it onto the forum.

Perhaps Pentax User should have something similar :

Why would that be a good idea? Is it not a solution for a non-existent problem?

Well - we get people joining (usually in the middle of the night) and then either posting 'gobbledegook' or a long 'spiel' trying to flog clothing or whatever.

Someone points this out, a moderator comes along and the person is banned and the posts removed.

With this other system, the problem is removed at source and nobody finds themselves starting to read spam.

The spammers are under control and often dealt with before any PMs or reports are read, sometimes after. There are already new tools in place to deal with them.

It's important to make sure people are actually spammers before deciding to delete them.

We can all help though by avoiding posting comments about any spam and especially avoiding quoting the spam in a new post - this just means that more posts have to be removed than actually could have been necessary.

It sounds a pretty unfriendly system tbh Hyram. So what if someone new wants to post a question which has been asked 15 times before? Having their post removed before it even hits the forum because of that seems a tad harsh.

Captcha and the like prevent auto spam, (no idea if PUF uses something like that) and usually any other spam is so obvious it I don't even open the topic.
Why make the Mods jobs even harder than they already are? Fine if the Mod on the other forum is the admin/owner and has the time and energy to do that, but to expect volunteers to do it is a bit much.

Over at PF we use a system that looks for certain things in any new user's first post like URLs etc. Also all user's first posts are held in a queue. It's a lot of work but almost no spam makes it onto the system. I delete spam every day. The mod team is deliberately arranged to have 24/24 cover so that when some are sleeping others are active. Seems to work ok. We never delete stuff that's been asked before - that's not the purpose of it. Other zealous mods might merge stuff sometimes but that's the exception rather than the rule.

I hadn't noticed that much spam on here so I think the mods are on top of this. I'd imagine 'vetting' every new users posts would be more work than they need, especially when they have to keep an eye on us lot (mostly you lot :wink anyway.

More importantly - why can't I put two spaces after a full stop? This forum keeps removing one .

Totally off topic - why would you want to put two spaces after a full stop?

Yes, sorry - it is off topic, I'd only just noticed in my reply above. I'm sure this will be moderated.

Anyway, 2 spaces after a full stop and 1 after a comma is the correct way to do things.

You can, but HTML strips them. It's just the way the web works.

But if you really want an extra space put   instead of spaces and it will show. But it seems like a lot of work.

Any text with two spaces after a full stop always looks awful, which is probably why they don't allow it

Actually, no. It looks better, which is why people do it.

G

Actually, no.  It looks better, which is why people do it.

See how much better this one looks.

G

Getting back to spam the other forum I mentioned has well over 100,000 members and a large group of moderators to share the load.

My initial posts were moderated very quickly.

I do not consider the system harsh but sensible.

You would not want people on this forum endelessly asking what type of Pentax lithium battery fits a K5, when they can look it up in the manual or check on the Pentax website.

But if they want to ask members' views on compatible batteries that is obviously o.k.

I wish I had a pound for every time the question about non OEM batteries is raised

We're more patient with new members than that. It doesn't matter how many times a question has been asked if you're the one who is posing it for the first time.