Anti-Span and Topic Creation: Y U NO CAPTCHA

[NotEgbert]

After dealing firsthand with all the anti-spam rules and filtering in trying to get my measurement thread posted, I'm left feeling a little irritated at the "false positive rate" and general overwhelmingness of the spam-control rules on this forum. In particular, having to find and reply (meaningfully) to 12 threads before I could post my own seemed a little counterproductive for spam control overall, as those are 12 posts that, while I made a best attempt to make meaningful and contributory, where nevertheless something the forum could have easily done without; all this in the name of "unlocking" the ability to post new threads.

Of course, once I got auto-removed from the "Wigglers" group after two hours of find-and-post, my topic wouldn't even show up for another 2-3 hours due to the lack of online moderators approving it. -_-

Honestly, as a new user to the forum who joined with the sole and express intent of creating a new topic to share my information, I was discouraged by the "wigglers" restriction almost to the point of giving up entirely and posting to r/Homestuck instead.

Now, just to be clear, I have no complaints with the mods or admins of the forums; in fact, I found the few I made contact with to be overwhelmingly polite and incredibly helpful. Rather, I feel that the automated antispam rules are somewhat misdirected and heavy-handed.

My big question is: why not just add CAPTCHAs or a similar system to the forum, requiring users to enter one when registering and when starting new topics, and also maybe for their first 5-10 posts? CAPTCHA is almost ubiquitous net-wide and it seems a little odd to be using "manual" antispam rules instead, especially on a forum platform with the capability built right in. The "wigglers" restriction/group could be totally eliminated, as could the delay in new topic creation, making the forums more accessible to new users and facilitating more active discussions while maintaining the same antispam control. The workload on moderators would also be cut, as they'd no longer have to read and approve every new topic independently.

I guess what I'd really like is some explanation by the Administration as to why the current antispam rules are designed the way they are, and why CAPTCHA isn't used. Now that I'm out of the "wigglers" group, if only by brute force, I still have to wait and wait for new topics to show up, which just seems...inefficient, both as a forum moderation philosophy and antispam measure in general. Of course, being new to the forum, I have very little experience on the type or amount of spam which gets posted here, and am looking to be enlightened, as I imagine that plays a large part in the decision to use the antispam rules as they are now.

Edit: I MISSPELLED SPAM IN THE THREAD TITLE?! Man I feel ashamed of myself.

[Blueberry]

I'm pretty sure there is a captcha for registration? or at least something resembling one.

also the spam filter stops looking at you after like 20 posts.

[NotEgbert]

I'm pretty sure there is a captcha for registration? or at least something resembling one.

also the spam filter stops looking at you after like 20 posts.

Yes, I just tested this by making a new account, and there is one for registration, which if nothing else confirms my suspicion that the forum platofrm supported them inherently.

My more general question is, if CAPTCHAs are available (and used), why is there a "wigglers" group and why must topics be approved by-hand by the mods? It seems like use of CAPTCHA would be enough to eliminate spam, so these other rules are just an irritating redundancy.

I was not aware of the 20-post whitelist, as I didn't see that mentioned anywhere in the forum faq/rules. The issue then is just irritation of jumping through hoops for new users only, not seasoned veterans...which is probably why it's not getting a whole lot of attention.

[kwinse]

Because CAPTCHA systems are broken and only keep out the simplest bots.

[NotEgbert]

Because CAPTCHA systems are broken and only keep out the simplest bots.

This is true of certain implementations, but even those with a <20% solve rate (reCaptcha with audio off) are still very effective overall, and would cut moderation effort by 80%. Newer methods, lie the ones using images and tiny flash-games, are largely unsolvable. reCAPTCHA is also constantly updating their system in order to combat new solution attacks.

[tynic]

Because of the anti-spam measures, you guys have no idea how many bots have managed to get through the registration system. It's a lot. The CAPTCHA is by no means sufficient. Because of our filter, generally only mods see spam posts, but if it were less stringent the forums would be overrun with bot posts, and in forums where we did turn off the wiggler restrictions - eg dinosaur comics - the number of spam threads became overwhelming.

Now, that's not to negate your point, it may be that there are better anti-spam measures which could be implemented which would make the spam filter redundant. Brian and Rincebrain, who deal with the technical side of forum management, do look into this kind of thing with relative frequency. No-one is happy with spam getting through, believe me. But as it stands, we need the filter.

As for discouraging new users - well, we're not entirely against new users being unable to make threads in any case. This forum has a lot of variegated topics and a lot of different subdirectories. In 90% of cases, any new thread you can think of would be well served under one of the existing topics. The idea behind the 12 posts is not to set pointless hurdles for new users to jump, but to get them to integrate into the community, find their way around and give them a taste of how things work before they launch into things wholesale.

[NotEgbert]

Because of the anti-spam measures, you guys have no idea how many bots have managed to get through the registration system. It's a lot. The CAPTCHA is by no means sufficient. Because of our filter, generally only mods see spam posts, but if it were less stringent the forums would be overrun with bot posts, and in forums where we did turn off the wiggler restrictions - eg dinosaur comics - the number of spam threads became overwhelming.

Now, that's not to negate your point, it may be that there are better anti-spam measures which could be implemented which would make the spam filter redundant. Brian and Rincebrain, who deal with the technical side of forum management, do look into this kind of thing with relative frequency. No-one is happy with spam getting through, believe me. But as it stands, we need the filter.

As for discouraging new users - well, we're not entirely against new users being unable to make threads in any case. This forum has a lot of variegated topics and a lot of different subdirectories. In 90% of cases, any new thread you can think of would be well served under one of the existing topics. The idea behind the 12 posts is not to set pointless hurdles for new users to jump, but to get them to integrate into the community, find their way around and give them a taste of how things work before they launch into things wholesale.

The explanation you give for the "wigglers" group certainly is more reasonable than a spam filtering method alone. I've also looked into the "new forum features coming!" threads, and see that a more comprehensive "introduction" period/phase is coming as well. I totally agree that new users benefit from being around the community and becoming familiar with existing and common threads, and the post restriction is a good way to make sure that happens.

I'm actually pretty surprised to hear about the amount of spam the forum gets; I guess it's both {A: more popular and B: more easily broken in to} than I thought. Certainly if the mods are dealing with spam posts everyday, the filter is going to be invaluable, and totally qualified.

Thanks for all the information.

[Drillgorg]

For every spam post you see actually get posted, there are roughly 20-50 that got sent to the spam queue and deleted by a mod.