Forum Support Requests

[phansford]

Kevin,

I don't know about anyone else's feeling in this matter, but could you please be more aggressive in removing posts and threads that are nothing but advertisements or posts that link to pirated software, adult sites, someone's personal website to sell ceramics, furniture, artwork or whatever. All this seem counter or unrelated to the forum and a real nuisance.

I would love to not see another "bootiful house in Viet Nam:" also. This is nothing but an ad.

There also seems to be a lot of posts from students here. Seems to me we already have a forum for student issues. Can these be moved?

Fellow Forum members, please post your thoughts so Kevin has an understanding how we feel about these issues. I have gotten more than one PM on these matters.

Thanks Kevin - both for the site and your other efforts.

[lekizz]

No doubt this will soon be moved to the "DesignCommunity Discussion" forum, phansford

Looking down the main forum threads, it seems the SPAM is being deleted, though I expect it only happens when the DC spam deletion operative wakes up and gets to his/her desk in Oregon (or wherever). I have seen a noticeable increase of sophisticated SPAM on my personal website in the last six months.

But I would be interested to know why a moved thread has the words 'moved' in block letters in front of it. Why can't it just move and leave no trace in the 'wrong' forum?

And what's with all those AEC forums? I've seen bewildered students putting threads in "Architecture and Building Help Wanted", which should be renamed "Architecture and Building Employment Opportunities" IMO.

[Kevin]

Ha! I knew someone wanted us to be more aggressive. (We were joking around about that in an earlier thread.)

And thanks for the comments - it is really helpful to hear how people are feeling. Some spam is totally obvious. Others are borderline, and there's a degree of community standard and expectation in how to handle it. With a goal of being inclusive, we try to give some slack and training to borderline cases. Often such training seems to be simply ignored.

The new adaptive spam filtering we've installed in the forums over the last week is already blocking more spam postings than are getting through. As we train the filter, it should get even better, up to some breakeven point where as the spammers counter-adapt, at least it has a better chance of keeping up.

Most postings are relocated to more appropriate forums without the "moved to..." subject tags. We do use those tags in cases where it seems like it might help with the learning (or hinting) process, or with the situation where the original poster doesn't realize their thread is moved, and so starts it over again in the wrong place. That's sure boring.

It is worth realizing that many of the newly-arriving particpants are parachuted into the middle of one forum by a search engine match, without necessarily having any idea of the overall structure of the community. Ideally they would figure things out, but, shall we say, there's a wide range in systematic comprehension on the Web.

Inclusiveness is a good thing for the community, but we're very aware there's also a point where chaos would start to break things down. The person who drops in with an odd post may have a real contribution to make over time, or even just by triggering an inquiry. The rank irrelevant exploiter has no place here at all.

There's an ongoing balancing act, and comments really do help with the ongoing fine-tuning to maintain it.

[phansford]

Kevin,

Can you take care of this thread.

http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14103

Thanks

[phansford]

Kevin,

Can you take care of these two threads, obviously from the same person.

http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/topic-15189.html

http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/topic-14589.html
(Last post in the thread)

Thanks in advance.

[phansford]

Kevin,

More of the same....

http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/topic-8527.html

Thanks

[phansford]

Kevin,

Looks like we got invaded by the - potential abuse - posters last night. Most are new threads, here a hidden post.....

http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/topic-18322.html