Spam-filter Blocked Live Suggestions now Posted
Noticed (thanks to Loraan) that the spam filter tagged about 40 posts in the Live suggestions thread. I'm actually pretty happy about the low number – 40 out of over 1000 posts is a pretty reasonable percentage. Anyway, just wanted to let you know that if one of your posts didn't seem to get through, it's probably there now. I approved all of them (although I only approved a single instance of posts that had multiple attempts for obvious reasons).
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bull****.
cool, atleast the spam system is workin
cool, we just need some better anti-spam for a certain (but fortunately low) ammount of users that post here to disprect certain opinions rather than simply expressing their own
Yeah, Community Server seems to be a little trigger happy on the spam detection… after seeing the discussion in the Live suggestions thread, I took a look at the spam queue, and there were several posts there. I have no idea why they were flagged (most didn’t even have URLs attached), but I don’t really understand Community Server. I can tell you that there was nothing in there objectionable except for the usual *** and phishing spam and a couple of annoyance posts from a**hats with nothing better to do with their time.
Well, to be honest, there were a couple of posts revealing details about our Alien Overlords from Vorgon VII, and we did have to suppress them as a matter of galactic security, but I swear that was all.
Oh, one possible suggestion: I noticed that several of the flagged comments were exact repeats posted in rapid succession (<5 min apart). Community Server does not show a comment immediately upon receipt; there's a waiting period. I don't know for certain, but Community Server might be flagging repeated posts as spam or a DOS attack and might be blocking them for that reason. If you post something and do not see it immediately, do not just post the comment again right away. Let the software have a little while. If you still don't see it, don't just repost it. Look over your comment and check it for potential hot-button words (note to the tin foil hat crowd, "Bill Gates is a goober" will not trigger the filters) or links to sites (that seems to have gotten my previous comments flagged). If you still don't see your comment after that, try to post a reworded form of the original comment or a comment to say you think something got lost.
For those who don’t run a blog themselves, I can tell you that comment spam is a serious issue (in fact, I am going to have to delete an attempted HTML injection attack comment that slipped through on this thread). On my personal blog (which is just for family and friends and isn’t even linked to anything), I get about 20 spam comments a day. I’m sure Ozymandias is getting even more. Automatic spam filtering is absolutely necessary now, but it’s a bit of a Dark Art. Spam filters get better, and spammers get craftier. Then the spam filters get better and so on. Sometimes stuff will slip through and sometimes stuff will get blocked that shouldn’t.
I can confirm that one of the spam settings watches for multiple posts from the same IP within a certain time period. Used to be 60 seconds, I recently upped it to 300 (or five minutes). Should be fine for most people who have something to say, but should cause some pain to people who want to dupe post.
Will keep trying to tune this. The other option (which I think most people would think is worse) would be to turn off anonymous comments, and require everyone have a simple account to post. I’d like to avoid that if possible, though, as it’ll discourage people from talking.
Now see, that’s just incredible irony.. A post about the trigger-happy spam blocker, and what’s in the comments? A nice big spam message… Seems that Community Server likes spam and hates real content.. *grin*
Rock!
Actually, Ozymandias loosened up the spam filter a bit to try to stop snagging real comments. I guess it’s a little too loose at the moment.
Aww… you deleted the spam, making my previous comment look dumb. :)
I totally understand about spam filter settings.. I deal with mail server spam on a daily basis.. And I’m getting into blog spam blocking now as well…
I guess my comment on the "Your thoughts on Live" page was spam-filtered out too though I don’t know why it would be. I posted in the time period between kinshadow and TawnosPrime. My message was along the lines of the following (exact wording not recalled or important at this point).
I’d like to be able to play my previously purchased and exclusively downloaded XBL Marketplace content on a replacement or refurb 360 without actually being connected to the internet or Live.
As the comment for the other thread are closed. I thought i’d drop by and say I’d like to see a remote Xbox option from my PC.
I.E.
If I see a download available on the marketplace (There should be a website where we can browse the marketplace), I should be able to click "Download" and have my Xbox at home switch on and start downloading. This could be done with a "wake-up on LAN option" maybe?
I understand the safety risks though as leaving an Xbox unattended might not be all that safe.
Andy Barlow (From Rob’s brain).