1 hour ago, exchemist said:

I see more of it this morning, clearly of Russian origin judging by the Cyrillic that is appearing. I wonder if someone is using AI to explore ways to defeat the various anti-spam measures on sites like this, by creating entities that resemble real people closely enough to beat the system.

Unfortunately these conversations are spam in themselves because they do not interact and the content looks like crap, lots of references but no links so those refs could be bogus.

Someone visiting would not know the difference.

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

I see more of it this morning, clearly of Russian origin judging by the Cyrillic that is appearing. I wonder if someone is using AI to explore ways to defeat the various anti-spam measures on sites like this, by creating entities that resemble real people closely enough to beat the system.

Thus far, the only rule broken has been one case of opening a second account. I did a spot check of a citation and it was legit.

Reporting things that aren’t rules violations adds an extra burden on the mods.

1 hour ago, swansont said:

Thus far, the only rule broken has been one case of opening a second account. I did a spot check of a citation and it was legit.

Reporting things that aren’t rules violations adds an extra burden on the mods.

OK I’ll stop reporting them then and wait to see what happens.

2 hours ago, pinball1970 said:

Unfortunately these conversations are spam in themselves because they do not interact and the content looks like crap, lots of references but no links so those refs could be bogus.

Someone visiting would not know the difference.

They are fairly obviously bogus, though to what purpose remains unclear at this point. We’ll just have to let them evolve and maybe the objective will become clear in time.

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

OK I’ll stop reporting them then and wait to see what happens.

I'll stop also unless something changes.

I reported two.

I started a spam thread then remembered this. A lot again today. I reported three

Why is this happening? Don't posts by new users require to be approved by a mod first?

If it's not the cranks, then it's the bots with spam.
Can't seem to catch a break lately.

I'll keep pushing my solution to the latter problem.
New members are not allowed to simply enter their information and start reading/posting; they can read immediately, but have to wait for a Moderator 'go ahead' before they can post.
You guys seem to be on top of things, so the new member would get the 'go ahead' within a few hours, or later that day.
Not a great burden for a new member, but a big detriment to bots/spammers.

55 minutes ago, MigL said:

If it's not the cranks, then it's the bots with spam.
Can't seem to catch a break lately.

I'll keep pushing my solution to the latter problem.
New members are not allowed to simply enter their information and start reading/posting; they can read immediately, but have to wait for a Moderator 'go ahead' before they can post.
You guys seem to be on top of things, so the new member would get the 'go ahead' within a few hours, or later that day.
Not a great burden for a new member, but a big detriment to bots/spammers.

Yes its pretty clear what's happening and also pretty clear how to spot the majority of these (by repetition) so shunting them off to a holding cache pending clearance should be relatively simple in this day of extra cheap memory/temp storage space.

+1

Edited November 5Nov 5 by studiot

56 minutes ago, MigL said:

New members are not allowed to simply enter their information and start reading/posting; they can read immediately, but have to wait for a Moderator 'go ahead' before they can post.

This doesn’t solve the problem though. They get approved, and then they spam. All this does is add an extra step for the moderators.

1 hour ago, swansont said:

This doesn’t solve the problem though. They get approved, and then they spam. All this does is add an extra step for the moderators.

This assumes that the spammer is a persistent person who will give their info/email, wait for a response, then flood us with spam, only to get immediately banned.
A bot, or a 'casual' spammer, will not; they just visit random sites and spam at will.

I am a user of two other forums, which require an admin to email you back before you are allowed to be a posting member ( or sometimes even see additional content )

1 hour ago, studiot said:

shunting them off to a holding cache

Not a holding cache for their posts, Studiot, but rather a wait for permission to 1st post.
And to save additional burden on the Admins, it could even be an automated response after about an hour or two; just long enough for the spammer to lose patience and move to the next random target.

Edited November 5Nov 5 by MigL

14 minutes ago, MigL said:

  1 hour ago, swansont said:

This doesn’t solve the problem though. They get approved, and then they spam. All this does is add an extra step for the moderators.

This assumes that the spammer is a persistent person who will give their info/email, wait for a response, then flood us with spam, only to get immediately banned.
A bot, or a 'casual' spammer, will not; they just visit random sites and spam at will.

I am a user of two other forums, which require an admin to email you back before you are allowed to be a posting member ( or sometimes even see additional content )

There is a compromise (assuming it is available in the forum software): Simply require a new member to wait say 24 hours after joining before they can post. In that case, the moderators don't have to do anything because there wouldn't be a basis to reject membership anyway.

29 minutes ago, MigL said:

A bot, or a 'casual' spammer, will not; they just visit random sites and spam at will.

Not always. We’ve had spammers who waited out the 24-hour limit to post more than 5 times, and ones in the past who posted to get to where they could post links (older board software; that restriction doesn’t seem to be in effect anymore)

There’s little to keep a anyone from registering and returning, if that’s what’s necessary to slime us.

40 minutes ago, swansont said:

Not always. We’ve had spammers who waited out the 24-hour limit to post more than 5 times, and ones in the past who posted to get to where they could post links (older board software; that restriction doesn’t seem to be in effect anymore)

There’s little to keep a anyone from registering and returning, if that’s what’s necessary to slime us.

Well we really want to brainstorm anything we can think of to lighten your load.

We are all very grateful for the work you put in without having extra.

I'd cheerfully lend you my 4 barrelled Mossberg and a box of Ghostbusters anti slime cartidges (if I had one)

😄

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Well we really want to brainstorm anything we can think of to lighten your load.

We are all very grateful for the work you put in without having extra.

I'd cheerfully lend you my 4 barrelled Mossberg and a box of Ghostbusters anti slime cartidges (if I had one)

😄

I actually have had a few ideas, spurred on by this discussion, that I will let the other mods/admins critique and point out any flaws I might have missed. Don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, or tip our hand.

9 hours ago, pinball1970 said:

I reported two.

Yes, I reported one too - but then recalled that we were told not to do that as it made more stuff for the mods to wade through, the spam posts themselves being fairly obvious. Oops. 🫢

I see there has been more discussion about countermeasures.

Why not require everybody's first post to be approved by the moderation?

6 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Why not require everybody's first post to be approved by the moderation?

Because that does not stop them spamming in their second post. How can a moderator tell, from an initial post, what the intentions of the new member are? You can already see that some of these spammers start off with plausible or semi-plausible "sciency" posts, wait a few days and then come back with the spam. It's tricky. But this is all being discussed on the other thread anyway. Best not to duplicate it here I suspect.

It’s also the easiest way to drive away new members. Most wouldn’t bother trying a second time and the site would die from lack of new blood and ideas

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

But this is all being discussed on the other thread anyway. Best not to duplicate it here I suspect.

They’ve now been merged.

The trick is discouraging spam but not legitimate new members, as iNow points out.

5 hours ago, studiot said:

I'd cheerfully lend you my 4 barrelled Mossberg and a box of Ghostbusters anti slime cartidges (if I had one)

😄

Just remember, whatever you do, don't cross the proton streams!

4 hours ago, swansont said:

I actually have had a few ideas, spurred on by this discussion, that I will let the other mods/admins critique and point out any flaws I might have missed. Don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, or tip our hand.

I tried to float "death penalty for littering" with my city council, but got nowhere. Nobody there values pragnatism. Or, IMHO, proportionality.

12 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Why not require everybody's first post to be approved by the moderation?

By the way, right on cue, here is an example of the kind of semi-plausible, but borderline necro, pointlessly content-free and thus suspicious, post from a new joiner (last one in the thread):https://scienceforums.net/topic/126922-url-shorteners/

Pound to a penny this entity will post a link with spam in it within the next few days.

I suppose one could argue that this type of probable spammer could in fact be weeded out by moderation asking, by email, for more information but it would be a lot of extra work, I should think.

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

By the way, right on cue, here is an example of the kind of semi-plausible, but borderline necro, pointlessly content-free and thus suspicious, post from a new joiner (last one in the thread):https://scienceforums.net/topic/126922-url-shorteners/

Pound to a penny this entity will post a link with spam in it within the next few days.

I suppose one could argue that this type of probable spammer could in fact be weeded out by moderation asking, by email, for more information but it would be a lot of extra work, I should think.

It's scary to think what the situation might look like in 2030 when AI will be significantly more advanced than today.

44 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

It's scary to think what the situation might look like in 2030 when AI will be significantly more advanced than today.

And now I've just been sent a private message, by some new shitbot calling itself @ArzuOzoguz123 , saying just "Hello".

18 minutes ago, exchemist said:

And now I've just been sent a private message, by some new shitbot calling itself @ArzuOzoguz123 , saying just "Hello".

Don't reply.

PMs avoid the 5 post limit.