Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Wow...spam

If I had that power, then I would abuse it and ban Raze...

JK.

No, it is completely understandable, I wouldn't do it either if I was Raze. Trust is good, control is better. ^^

Conversely, why assume that Tor is used for illegal activities only? There's been enough publicity about wholesale tracking of Internet usage by various TLA agencies, and entities like Google can take that a stage further with browser fingerprinting.

If that sort of thing bothers you, then Tor (along with ad-blocking and web filtering) is one of the best countermeasures, and the more people that use it, the more protection it offers.

I can, and I did consider it, actually.

There are moderators, global moderators (who can ban accounts), and administrators (who can delete accounts, or designate them as a mod or administrator). I was a moderator for a year and a half before being made a global moderator, and that was prompted by the Dragon Commander beta forum initially being restricted (I needed to be able to edit users to give them access to the forum). I was only made an administrator a couple days before most of Larian went on holiday, so I'm not sure what Larian would think of going straight to global moderators for volunteer spam fighters.

I think it is fine with me just being regular moderator. Deleting post using inline moderation is pretty fast - and if better security measures are coming soon anyway it should be fine.

These guys are relentless

Deleted (though I'm sure they'll try again in an hour, or so).
EDIT: make that half an hour.

I took on the hat because I really didn't have much justification to complain about something if I wasn't willing to do something about it.

Once you stop being a "spam fighter" and becoming an actual moderator moderator you run into lots of sticky judgement calls that require you to not only be willing to shut down someone's opinion but also to justify your reason for doing so.

I've been on forums for nigh on two decades now and you see all kinds. Is someone trolling/flaming or is that really their opinion? Is a new poster being egged into a fight by a social clique of regulars who know how to push buttons without breaking rules? When does cussing and fighting go from tolerable to intolerable?

You might not think these especially weighty issues but at its most fundamental we're dealing with the restriction of someone else's point of view. No one should ever be flippant about that sort of thing.

While no poster enjoys the "Freedom of Speech" on a message board (it being private property), it's not unreasonable for them to assume they should have a fair shake at things in terms of expressing their views. Too firm a hand and you end up squelching ideas and giving bullies the means to use the moderator as a weapon via manipulation. Too loose a hand and things all just fall to pieces.

While not quite a burden to be a moderator with that kind of power, it certainly requires a degree of patience, empathy and a desire to watch a community flourish.

Yeah. I don't mind doing tidying and stuff like that, and wouldn't object to suspending the most obvious of spammers and trolls, but other than that I'm not desperately enthusiastic about trying to judge who if anyone was the cause of a flare up and the best way of calming the situation.

And I've seen plenty of examples of people pushing buttons to get others into trouble, and just as many of people who weren't out to cause trouble but just, er, inexperienced at making their point eloquently.

So I'm fine with doing the housework, but I think the cat-herding would make me a nervous wreck!

Soooo, when will that anti-spam protection be ready? ^^

Soon, hopefully. I've cleared out the latest batch but no doubt we'll get another visit before long...

I have my lunch break right now and I guess spam will start to pop up again in about 10-15 minutes (at least it I observed this pattern yesterday and on Monday)

Edit: Yep, another spam attack is on time.

A 3 article per day limit should be good. 15 mins minimum between creating the articles would also be fine.

But then how will we solve our love marriage divorce problems? (ref: most recent spam attack).

Well, it's quite obvious, isn't it?^^ With black magic of course!

I have just cleared the recent spam threads (they will probably pop up in about an hour again though)

It's getting a bit ridiculous now. Are you sure anyone is doing anything about this? It seems as if "hiring" a couple of mods to delete is about as far as it's going. To add a couple of features to prevent this sort of spam would take a few mins tops. Me thinks it be down on the list very unimportant things to do.

To be fair to the Larian chaps, they've had a long period of late nights to get the game out there (hoping not to sound too fangirly about it!) so their break was well-deserved. They'll get to forum manglement when time allows.

In the meantime, other volunteers and myself will nuke any spam we see. With any luck, before anyone else is plagued by it, but we need to eat and sleep too.

Between the 2 groups all there seems to be is eating and sleeping.

I would make some snarky comment, but I'm busy eating.

Here we go again

Deleted.