XF Spam Mitigation

[Alpha1]

Speaking about the devil, here are more details on the bills the US is threatening:
https://theadminzone.com/threads/us...-speech-fake-accounts-data-protection.148201/

 

[mysiteguy]

Speaking about the devil, here are more details on the bills the US is threatening:
https://theadminzone.com/threads/us...-speech-fake-accounts-data-protection.148201/

No, it's not a bill (or bills).

It's a draft white paper proposal.

1. In the Senate, a bill would need to be drafted.
2. Then introduced to the Senate.
3. Then it is referred to the appropriate committee.
4. Then it is placed on their calendar.
5. At that date, the committee debates it, and may make changes.
6. The committee then votes to accept or reject changes. If there are many changes, it goes back to step 2.
7. If the committee accepts changes, it votes on it. They may either approve, stop it, or table it for review at another time.
8. It is approved it is then published on the Library of Congress web site, where the public can see it (so they can comment to their senators and representatives).
9. It then goes to a subcommittee.
10. The bill is studied, and they may hold hearings to get the views of supporters, opponents and experts.
11. The table is then either tabled or not.
12. If subcommittee members want changes, they vote to approve or reject changes.
13. If approved, it then goes back to the full committee for approval or rejection.
14. The status is updated on the Library of Congress web site.
15. If the full committee approves, the bill goes to the floor for a Senate vote.
16. If it passes, then it goes to the House of Representatives, to go through their procedure.
17. If it makes it through the House, its almost always amended, and a committee made up of members both the House and the Senata have to reconcile differences between both versions of the bill.
18. It is then referred back to the Senate, and back to the House, if the reconciled bill has major changes, where it must get approved.
19. It can then go back to committee for further study, starting the process again, or to a vote for passage.

Its a long way from being a bill, or even passed. And if it did make it past the Senate, the odds it gets through the House are lower, since they come up for re-election every two years (versus 6 for Senators) and they tend to be more reluctant to pass controvesial bills since it's less likely to fade from public memory in the short time span.

As I noted earlier, its my opinion its political chest thumping.

Congress went through the same chest thumping back when Bill Gates had to testify before them in the 1990s. Passage... slim chances. There are currently over 12,000 bills before Congress and the vast majority will never make it to a vote.

 

[Alpha1]

I never said it was a bill. its a whitepaper laying out the issues the US is facing and an array of possible approaches in the form of bills that could be introduced to address these issues.

 

[Mouth]

Maybe in some EU countries, but "hate speech" isn't a crime in the USA, neither is fake news.

Luckily, most of the world doesn't follow the USA's example here. Hopefully, XF won't be constrained by limiting itself to the lowest common denominator either.

 

[GoingRight]

One thing that I find odd in XenForo 1 is that the system can send an account to the moderation queue because it meets a criteria. But then its not visible why it is in the moderation queue. Half the time it will become clear when checking out the account. But if not then we might just let a spammer in due to lack of information. Is this still the same in XF2?

The moderation queue is very clunky. As you said, the info provided is not very useful. AndyB has an addon that shows IP and location and customer user fields. I too would hope that the user queue is better in XF2. In XF1 we have never really been able to use it and it’s just full of thousands of users.

We like to give a lot of members permission to use the spam gun. We get the same Chinese university spammers, as well as babbling health/diet. By giving members the power to zap spammers we think they find added purpose in the community. We thought the faster the spam gets deleted the more discouraged the spammers would become, but that’s not the case. It does help user experience though, with less spam visible time.

 

[djbaxter]

I too would hope that the user queue is better in XF2.

It is. Much improved without any addons. I just upgraded.

You get alerts in the "Admin Bar" at the top of the forum and you don't even have to leave the forum page to process them (i.e., you don't need to go to the AdminCP). I think this applies not only to new registrations but also to moderated posts or threads.

(A number of things that used to require addons are now built in. I eliminated 9 plugins with the upgrade.)

 

[Alpha1]

AndyB has an addon that shows IP and location and customer user fields.

I used that one for a while until it turned out to give performance issues on a big board. (if you have a lot of registrations)
When I had my registrations essentials addon developed, I had functions added to it that replaced the display of fields.