Return of the Mighty BotSlayer

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

The Delete Post as Spam option makes doing it all together pretty simple - and I honestly enjoy the satisfaction of
laying the hammer to the bots.

[Ming]

Yah, I often don't even ban them because that takes a little extra time.

Lazy bastard

The extra few seconds is worth it. BU has got it right

On a good day, I ban about 10 or so bots.
Now, if I beat BU to the punch, it's a good day

[Aeson]

I like to think they could someday become valuable off-topic contributors if given a second chance ...

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Keeping all the forums marked as read helps spot new posts, which, alas, works pretty well for on-topic -except for the Spanish forum, which seems to have an active mod. Fair actual gamer newb activity in CPT yesterday, BTW, which I hope someone who knows their CPT will respond to soon...

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Hey Ming - have you caught any bots since Friday? I got nothin' for two days now, and I can't believe they took a weekend off.

[Aeson]

I just took out one who had a website address for a username and a few spammy but topical posts ... interesting approach...

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Is just got one in Civ4 academy - I really hate Oakley sunglasses now. I guess they did take the weekend off.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

They really did. I haven't been on an hour, and I've gotten three this morning.

[Ming]

They really did. I haven't been on an hour, and I've gotten three this morning.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]175856[/ATTACH]

Good job... My count has been really reduced now that you are on the job as well.

Now I only see one or two at a time...

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I got a really industrious one last night that had put up ten posts worth of question marks in minutes.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Would it be feasible to have something appear to mark banned accounts - so it would be visible at a glance, at least in their profiles? That would be helpful.

Also, I reported a post of mine as a test about half an hour ago - no notification so far.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

I had an interesting case when I came on today. http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/2...67#post6317967 Probably qualifies as commercial spam, but game spam in Other Games, if the link checks out.

Problem is, the user had first polluted -mostly Gal Civ- with 22 posts of "I totally agree with u", some of it double posts, and one "nice" first, clearly to get PC up to link-posting level. I deleted the garbage, but erred on the side of mercy about banning and left the post linked above that might prove worthwhile. -But somebody ought to check the link, and I'm not gonna.

[OzzyKP]

Welcome Buster's Uncle to botslaying!

[OzzyKP]

Also, when you see some very obvious spam, I suggest hard deleting them and selecting the option to delete all other posts by that user and banning them. You can plow through a bunch that way.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Aside from that special case this morning, I do use use the delete all and ban option.

I asked Aeson about hard v. soft deleting, and never got an answer. Locutus once told me to never hard delete because it sometimes borks the server for some reason - I'd like to get a definitive ruling about what the SOP is/should be, and would rather err on the side of caution in the meantime. I believe they can always be hard deleted later...