At the moment spammers appear to be on the loose again. Is it something in the water?
To judge by the latest spam-post, it’s bromide that people are putting in the water…
LingQ - members should report spammers to “support at Lingq.com”. That’s what I always do.
Fasulye
I used to do that, but they said there was no need, as they get deleted within 24hrs or something, and they read everything…
It’s been asked several times, during similar discussions, that new comers should not be allowed to create threads.
That sounds a good idea, in my opinion, and this small adjustment would considerably reduce the number of spammers.
The funny thing is, NOONE would ever want to run out and buy those products after seeing the nuisance spams, so why do they bother having robots/machine-generated spam.
Another spam notice I occasionally see on others’ walls, and in my in-box, are the “hi, my name is Miss blah-blah, your posts are really interesting, I’d like to know you so contact my email & I’ll send you pictures etc, etc. I believe we can move from here, love has no age or colour barrier, blah, blah, blah…” just looking for a sucker to fall for a fake romance and give them money… the one I received today would imply I was gay…nope! - so it’s machine generated. Hope no LingQ member actually falls for one of those scams…
That’s an interesting point, Julz.
But it’s probably a bit like the Indian call centre scam - if you contact enough people, eventually you will find a victim. This is the (sad) principle on which spammers and fraudsters operate, I guess.
I would support the idea that newcomers should not be allowed to create a thread. The current spam posts are really annoying.
@all - We do monitor the forum and usually remove any spam posts within 24 hours. If a post has been up for more than 24 hours then we may have missed it. In these cases please email us to let us know. Otherwise rest assured that we will get to it
We don’t want to restrict new users from posting, as there are often new users who have questions or want advice and post the day that they sign up. Instead, it’s probably best for now to just delete spam as it comes in. Sometimes there are flurries of posts, but it typically dies down pretty quickly. Thanks for your understanding of this.
Maybe you could think about the option trustworthy longtime LingQ members to offer the opportunity to delete such posts. That would make sure that they were deleted faster and even in your sleep times. I was a moderator on another forum where I was able to do this.
Now that it’s gone, I almost feel nostalgic about that “African-black-ant-Viagra” thread!
As regards having moderators, I think there is a grave danger that this would see the LingQ forum become like the HTLAL forum. It seems unbelievable, but even some well known online polyglots (such as Steve Kaufmann and David James) have been banned or censored there in the past!
Of course I’m sure that Vera would never behave this way. But the principle of moderation is flawed: if you give some people within an online community special status or authority, some of them will always abuse this to take away the freedom of others, IMO.
Agreed.
I’m more for a temporarily obscuring the message button given to a chosen few : one could wield one’s power and yet leave the decision up to Alex et al…
Signed: mad-power-hungry-gleam-in-eye grandmother
C’mon Sanne, why should Alex be the only one to know about those black-ant Kruppstahlpillen?
(Hey, I just invented a German word!! :-D)
I’d better withdraw, in a ladylike fashion, from this conversation, (but your original Wortschöpfung wasn’t bad.)
Ah yes, the original one!
I liked that better, but this is after all a family show, so I engaged in a little self-censorship (which is indeed the only good form of censorship, IMO)