New members' messages currently moderated to prevent spam

[Sumit Chandel]

Hi everyone,

We've recently been seeing recurring spam attacks on our developer
forum. To help keep the forums clean, we will be temporarily
moderating messages posted by new members until the recent spammers
stop targeting our forums.

The GWT developer forum will still be as accessible as ever, we will
post any message relevant to GWT without hesitation. We're only
putting this moderation policy in place to deal with the spam.

Our apologies for the inconvenience this poses to new members.

Thanks,
-Sumit Chandel

[rudolf michael]

FINALLY!!!!

my inbox is begin flooded with 100 spam messages. damn how i hate SPAMMERS

 

[Jason Essington]

moderation++

thanks Sumit

[Junyang]

+1. I support this move after I give up reporting these spammers.

[Rob...@gmail.com]

Thanks Sumit

[arthu...@gmail.com]

Thanks Sumit, I was getting tired of reporting them :)

[Chris]

The moderation must be very slow - I sent a message last week and it
never appeared.

Chris.

[Sumit Chandel]

Hi Chris,

I usually poll the groups for pending messages from new members every couple of hours or so and post up any relevant thread. In fact, I just did a scan a few minutes ago and posted the next batch of messages.

I'm not sure how your message got lost in the process, but feel free to re-post it and ping me when it's up so I can make sure that it gets posted on the forum.

Sorry for any inadvertent delay.
-Sumit Chandel

--
Join us at Google's biggest developer event of the year
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[rauschma]

Would an automatic white list (say, of people that have posted 10
times) save you guys work? But maybe that's already what you are doing
("new members" seems to indicate as much).

AR

[rauschma]

Would an automatic white list (say, of people that have posted 10
times) save you guys work? But maybe that's already what you are doing
("new members" seems to indicate as much).

AR

On Apr 9, 7:04 pm, "Sumit Chandel" <sumitchan...@google.com> wrote:

[Ben]

Since there already seems to be a "new members" whitelist in place,
might it be possible to make it a little more flexible?

For example, could you automatically include anyone who actively
commits to a Google Code hosted project?

What about a "moderate once, then trust" approach? As soon as a
moderator approves a member's first post to the group, that user gets
added to the whitelist (rather than just his/her one post going
through)? This raises the bar for spammers, perhaps enough to filter
out most spam.

Why? I'm disappointed and frustrated - a rare occasion when it comes
to Google. I posted a detailed question, then waited for it to pass
moderation. Once that happened, two users replied very quickly. It was
a "live" discussion. I immediately responded to those posts, with a
follow-up of my own clarifying the problem I'm facing. And now I'm
back to waiting on the moderator, because apparently I'm still a new
member. In the meantime, the thread is going cold and the people who
replied initially may think I am ignoring their responses.

[Sumit Chandel]

Hi Ben,

Unfortunately, current Groups settings aren't granular enough for a
"moderate once, then trust" approach. I'm sorry for the added lag
moderation time you've experienced trying to keep a thread
conversation going.

I've noticed that the previous recurring spam attacks on Groups which
got the whole message moderation deal started haven't been creeping up
in the last few weeks. I think it's a good time to temporarily lift
the moderation policy and see how it goes. Groups members will
probably see some sporadic spam threads, which will be removed from
the Groups shortly after posting, but there shouldn't be any massive
spam attacks like we've seen a month or so ago.

If anyone starts getting more spam than they can deal with, just shout
out to me on this thread.

Cheers,
-Sumit Chandel

[Sumit Chandel]

UPDATE:

Although I've changed the Groups settings to remove moderation as
mentioned last week, it seems that the changes haven't taken effect
and messages are still being held for moderation.

I'm investigating what's taking so long for the new changes to take
effect, but until they do, I'll continue moderating any new messages
to make sure they get posted with the least delay possible.

Thanks,
-Sumit Chandel

[Sumit Chandel]

Attempting to change thread title (second try).
-Sumit

[rauschma]

My posts are still moderated. That in itself is not too big of a
problem.

But the posts are listed as having been published at the time when I
submitted (and not when they actually appeared in the group). This is
not ideal, because older posts tend to be overlooked (if one scans the
message manually). Can this be fixed?

[Sumit Chandel]

Hey rauschma,

Although the moderation policy has been lifted, it turns out that there is an issue with Groups that still enforces moderation on members who joined the group while the moderation policy was in effect. Any members who joined after the moderation policy was lifted will be able to post freely.

There are two ways to fix this problem:

1) A user who was marked as "new and moderated" gets enough approved posts such that Groups no longer considers them as a new member.

2) A Groups administrator manually sets the member's access to default (unmoderated posting).

I have currently done the latter for your user account, so you should be able to post freely.

I'll begin manually setting member access to post freely for any other new members whose messages are still being moderated. In the meantime, my apologies for the inconvenience.

Cheers,
-Sumit Chandel

[Sumit Chandel]

Hello everyone,

Unfortunately, the spam attacks are back. The best solution is to have
better spam protection in Groups, and while that's coming, for the
time being the spam filter is not doing it's job and a lot of spam is
making it through to the forum.

In order to keep spam to a minimum, I'm reinstating the moderation
policy to hold messages posted by new members for moderation.
Unfortunately, this has the negative side effect of adding a bit more
delay to getting new member messages posted, but it seems like it's a
necessary evil as these spam attacks really get in the way of a good
forum experience. To keep posting delays as short as possible, I will
set new members to the default posting policy as soon as I check the
first post and verify that it is legitimate.

Sorry for having to reinstate the policy. We'll be trying to keep the
forum experience for new posters as smooth as possible while we wait
for a better spam handling system.

Thanks,
-Sumit Chandel

[Sumit Chandel]

(starting new thread because Groups automatically closed the previous
moderation policy thread)

Hello everyone,

Unfortunately, the spam attacks are back. The best solution is to have
better spam protection in Groups, and while that's coming, for the
time being the spam filter is not doing it's job and a lot of spam is
making it through to the forum.

In order to keep spam to a minimum, I'm reinstating the moderation

policy to hold messages posted by new members for approval.

[kozura]

Does this apply to the Contributors group as well? I posted a reply
to a message there yesterday and it seems to have gone off into the
ether (or maybe it didn't pass muster!)

[Sumit Chandel]

Hey kozura,

Nope, this shouldn't apply to the Contributors group. What was the content of the message itself? It could have been anyone from the GWT team who moderated that message, or just a Groups bug that sucked the message into the abyss.

Thanks,
-Sumit Chandel

[housee]

Is this spam prevention system still active?
I can't see my post yet.

[Sumit Chandel]

Hi housee,

The spam preventing moderation policy is still in effect. I moderated a bunch of posts earlier this morning, and I believe yours was included in the batch and has been posted.

Sorry for the delay.
-Sumit Chandel

[Sumit Chandel]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to apologize for a recent bunch of spam messages that made it
to the Groups discussion forum. I was going through the manual process
of moderating the threads and approving new users, and somehow the
Groups moderation panel forgot which messages I was permitting and
which I wasn't, and pressed "moderate messages" too early.

The spammers who posted these messages have already been banned, so
they won't be back, but unfortunately there is one batch of spam that
made it through to the groups.

Cheers,
-Sumit Chandel

[Amit Dhingra]

Cool moderation... +1

Cheers,
Amit

--
Warm Regards,
Amit Dhingra

[ajay jetti]

Hi

GOsh, there were so many of them at once

[gregor]

I've noticed that we seem to inundated with spam again. Has the policy
lapsed?

regards
gregor

[Sumit Chandel]

Hey gregor,

Check out the thread four messages back :-P

Basically I had a slip up with Groups this morning while moderating
messages, and accidentally ended up letting a whole batch of spam
through.

Sorry about that!
-Sumit Chandel

[Ian Bambury]

It does go to show how much we are saved from.

 

Usually :-)

 

 

Thanks Sumit, for doing a job that usually goes unnoticed and therefore unthanked.

 

Ian

2008/9/19 Sumit Chandel <sumitc...@google.com>

that is FF

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[gregor]

+1 to that

On Sep 19, 3:17 pm, "Ian Bambury" <ianbamb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It does go to show how much we are saved from.
>
> Usually :-)
>
> Thanks Sumit, for doing a job that usually goes unnoticed and therefore
> unthanked.
>
> Ian
>

> 2008/9/19 Sumit Chandel <sumitchan...@google.com>

>
>
>
>
>
> > Hey gregor,
>
> > Check out the thread four messages back :-P
>
> > Basically I had a slip up with Groups this morning while moderating
> > messages, and accidentally ended up letting a whole batch of spam
> > through.
>
> > Sorry about that!
> > -Sumit Chandel
>

> > On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 2:45 PM, gregor <greg.power...@googlemail.com>

> > wrote:
>
> > > I've noticed that we seem to inundated with spam again. Has the policy
> > > lapsed?
>
> > > regards
> > > gregor
>
> > > On Sep 19, 11:36 am, "ajay jetti" <programmera...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> Hi
> > >> GOsh, there were so many of them at once
>

> --
> Ian
>
> http://examples.roughian.com
>
> 2B or not 2B,

[Sumit Chandel]

Hi Lim,

I just moderated a new batch of messages. It's possible you're message was in the queue.

It should come up now. If not, let me know.

Thanks,

-Sumit Chandel

On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 3:38 PM, TH Lim <ssh...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I am new to this group and cannot post new topics to this group. Is
this because of the spam policy in place? Thanks

/lim/