Restrict/block spam / non-chromiumOS related content?

[Ryan Hansberry]

Hi chromium-os-dev,

Can anything be done to restrict or reduce the amount of spam and unprofessional content that has been occasionally popping up on this forum? I generally can ignore such silly Internet things, but after seeing a fairly disturbing post in recent days (among the other immensely annoying spam posts), I'd like to know if anything is being done to prevent this.

Best,

Ryan

[Keith I Myers]

I agree - these have gotten out of hand (on multiple Google Groups). Is it possible to moderate new members? It wont completely eliminate all bad actors but it would help. I don't mind helping with this if needed. 

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Keith I Myers http://KMyers.me Mobile : (305)-929-3475

[Mike Frysinger]

currently, I don't think we're doing anything specific for this group. group admins don't have any knobs that would really help here other than banning specific accounts (which only stops repeat offenders) or setting moderation bits (which would cause delays for all posts).

if we get another wave, I'll start bugging people to perhaps go moderated for a week or so and see if that (effectively) stops new spam.

-mike

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[Ryan Hansberry]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your response. I'm sure that it's very difficult to moderate this forum (otherwise this topic wouldn't need to be brought up). However, I believe this latest round of awful and disturbing posts is motivation enough to begin investigating solutions now (I'm sure others would agree). I personally don't want to read any more posts like these, and I'm concerned for colleagues who may be even more hurt or impacted by such content. Is it possible to make this forum invite-only for posting? Do others have any recommendations?

Again, thank you for your response, and I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on this.

Best,

Ryan

[Allen Webb]

Ryan,

If these posts are affecting your work, it might be a good idea for you to change your email delivery preferences for this group to "digest", or "no emails". This will not prevent you from receiving emails for posts you make to this group, and will cut down on how much spam ends up in your inbox.

Mike already has enough responsibilities and moderating spam would take away from those. If you believe the spam has been bad enough to warrant investigating solutions, I would recommend doing some investigation into what solutions would be helpful.

Allen

[Rahul Chaturvedi]

Instead of ignoring a serious issue because Mike has enough responsibilities, it may be a better to spread those responsibilities instead?

I am willing to volunteer to help with moderation - I am sure many others would too.

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[Allen Webb]

Rahul,

That might be a good short term solution, but as Keith pointed out this is a problem across several groups. I am not a group admin so I don't know what knobs are available but it seems to me the gmail spam filter should be applied to groups and moderators would just need to intervene when something was mistakenly marked as spam. I am not sure how much active development google groups has though.

Allen

[Rahul Chaturvedi]

Till we have a longer term solution, having a short-term solution that prevents the entirety of Chrome OS engineers having to put up with disgusting e-mails in their work inbox doesn't sound reasonable.

[Rahul Chaturvedi]

*doesn't sound unreasonable.

[Mike Frysinger]

we've turned on moderation for new members joining, and we'll keep it on for a few weeks to see if people keep trying. that should prevent new spammers, assuming we can tell from their name/email. probably focus on ones in all caps, or ones without a name.

-mike

On Tue, May 8, 2018, 02:05 Ryan Hansberry <hans...@chromium.org> wrote:

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[James Smith]

how long dose new members have to wait until they can make posts?

[Mike Frysinger]

sorry, i misread what Dan had said.  we haven't turned on moderation of joining, but moderation of posts by new members.  once the first few messages by someone look legit, we'll stop moderating them.  so we don't have to judge whether their name/e-mail looks suspicious.

as for how long moderation takes for the new people, it's until a moderator sees & approves it.  should be less than 1 week.

-mike

On Wed, May 9, 2018 at 3:42 PM James Smith <adamk...@gmail.com> wrote:

how long dose new members have to wait until they can make posts?

[James Smith]

Hey I've done some work with APIs before and I was thinking if we could have a API within the this group to look out for messages that are over 50% capitulate letters and posts with out any content (just blank posts) ect...

Would that be a good idea

also I know there isn't such a API on the google API directory 

we could work on a 3rd party one.

[Keith I Myers]

That is great news, hopefully it solves the growing spam problem without discouraging legitimate new members. It can be a thin line to walk at times. 

[Rahul Chaturvedi]

I doubt if this will really either be a significant moderating burden or a barrier of entry - but we'll find out.

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-os-dev

[Ryan Hansberry]

To echo Keith, this is great news. Huge thanks to Mike, Rahul, and Dan (not visible on this thread). :)

Best,

Ryan

On Monday, May 7, 2018 at 10:05:42 AM UTC-7, Ryan Hansberry wrote:

[Mike Frysinger]

looks like we already got more attempts from this group, but they've been caught & thrown away now

chromium-os-dev & chromium-os-discuss are both now configured to moderate posts by new members, so spam capture should be the same

-mike

[Keith I Myers]

Great News - It does appear the last few Spam posts that made it through this weekend were from existing users who replied to posts - likely how they bypassed the restriction. 

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-os-dev
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