Karaoke Forums

I've just notified KS "Contact Us" link, Administration as well as Phill (by phone too) regarding types of recent spamming on here.  I doubt under the current setup in KS, there's a means of even getting to material of this nature soon enough.  I would be willing to attempt to help if I can.  I'm often up third shift, and would be able to TRY to help nip some of these spammer at the bud if possible.  Lonman mentioned something awhile back regarding volunteering regs of this site having the authority possibly to remove certain types of spam... It's getting blatant, and I'm concerned that it poses a serious problem to a site I care about and frequent. While I'm ONLY a regular of this site, it would be ashame if spam of recent nature prevents us all from having the ability to post links in the site, photo's, etc.  It can (I suppose) become a means of disallowing us all to post links.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

It's happening at a lot of sites.  A lot of dorks are using google and other avenues to find websites with traffic and then registering there and promoting their sites (viagra, porn, and anything else under the sun).

Probably the best thing to do is to make a couple of regulars moderators to delete those posts and then forward you the names so you can delete their ID's.  I admin on another site and that's pretty much what we do.  :cool:

i was just discussing that sort of thing with the missus this morning.  she visits a photography forum on a regular basis.  it use to be a free-of-charge forum like this one.   they changed the website, upgraded a few things and started charging $20 a month.  i'm not saying we'd spend $20 a month for a forum, but i think we could weed out a bunch of garbage (take that however you like) if this were maid a paid forum.  what do you all think?

steven, i'm not trying to hijack the thread so i appologize in advance it that's what happens

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All work and no play make Homer something something

Well,  As someone who's spent so much time here, I know I have about an hour third shift to try to help (assuming I can) at least three times a week.  I think we'd need at least several trustworthy regs in here, but I'm just bringing up an idea I saw Lonnie post a few weeks back.  Not sure what else to do.  Like many, I DO care about the well-being of this interactive site, and all positive artistic interactive sites online. I think it's a great thing for musicians, and all that love the arts alike to have such a means of interacting.  I'd hate to see blatant X-rated material endanger this sites wellbeing. Realstically, opening a thread and seeing what I saw this morning won't harm me personally, however this is a "G" rated site.  My concern is that one of your elementary school-aged children will stumble upon it if it's not wiped out soon enough !  These weren't links I needed to click on to open.  These were photo's that showed up when the thread was opened.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

it's s little sickening that someone would do that.  i must have missed the thread, but then again, i'm at the point now, where i rarely open a thread that wasn't started or at least replied to by someone i recognize.  it's a shame, really.  i like this site quite a bit.

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All work and no play make Homer something something

Well,  As I've mentioned software programming and "site handling" are very weak areas for me.  My thoughts (off the top of my head) are there're really two ways to handle this.  These of course are guesses..  One option would be disable linking in the Open forum rooms, and perhaps not allow such a capability until a person has put in some time here, and has joined Singer's Forum, or membership forums.  Of course I have NO idea how difficult such programming would be for the site.  Another option is a means of VERY quickly deleting this spam that's progressively getting to be more "bold" in presentation.  Again,  I'm  just a reg here with close to no knowledge of how to remedy this stuff.  Yet it appeared to me to pose a precarious & emergent situation this morning.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

i don't think the option of "VERY quickly deleting this spam" would work since it would require a mod be online 24/7.  leaving it in the hands of the regular posters would be a slippery slope as well.  it is quite a kunundrum, eh?  i think the first option is viable, though.  in fact, i kind of like the idea after thinking on it awhile.

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All work and no play make Homer something something

Might be the only option.  Software not allowing direct linking in sites where spammers are quickly able to join, hit, and run (get bannished, etc).

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

Steven, I LIKE your idea about the limiting of urls until you're a "certain" type of member, got so many posts under you...

Unsure how it would work with this type of bboard. I think having it happen like the Singer's forum, where you need 15 posts under you to join is a good concept!

Well done!

I had sent a pm to Phil a while ago and asked if I could be a mod that could take stuff like that down.  I am now a club mod but I have no ability to take porn down off the site.  So I am once again volunteering to do this....I also think they should have some mods that are here on a regular basis that can handle this kind of thing.  There are too many younger ones here that don't need to be looking at that stuff....Heck I don't even want to see it here myself....

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Will sing or fish for food!!I'm not quite right!!

When you consider that this is an international site, this is doable. While here in Ct. I might be babbling 3 AM,  Jian is also around, and it's a VERY different time of day for him halfway across the world  :)

Whatever it takes I suppose.  As you mentioned however "VERY quickly deleting this spam" still would make such a system fallible. Someone might not be present in time.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

I've offered to be one as well, haven't heard back.  Most boards of this type have 2 or 3 mods PER forum.  I'd be willing to work in the Discussion & Tech forums as these are the main ones I regularly frequent.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

I am awake when most of you are in bed. I see the most spams cos they tend to post late at night (US time). I don't mind helping in this aspect.

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

How ironic.  :no:  Some more porn spam just popped up.  Anybody with post removing abilities around here yet?

Hmmmmm....I haven't seen all of this y'all are referring to, but I would like to apologize for posting a pic of myself in drag the other night.
The original poster was definitely out of order, but a few regulars joined in and "hijacked" the thread thank heavens, but I'm sure y'all didn't need to see me in my painted on pink bikini.......sorry about that.

Oh, also, I didn't click on any of those links....who the heck knows what's really on there?

The reason I was this concerned Perry is because on this ocassion you did not have to "click" on any link.  Any person by merely clicking on the thread subject (sometimes camouflaged in title) was viewing the photos directly.  Yesterday morning these spammers placed the images directly in the first post of their thread.  Just as any photobucket link we might post or even Avatar photo, the images were self expanding. Nothing to click, it was that blatant.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

Spam police - great idea. Maybe they could add a spam button to click on to report it
and set it up so if enough people click the button on that post it goes away. Of course that would have to be on the honor system.

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[shadow=pink][glow=deepskyblue]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
[updown]~*~ MONKEY BUSINESS KARAOKE~*~ [/shadow][/updown][/glow]

I didn't see the thread you're referring to Steven, but I recall another once having photos imbedded right in the thread... and it even shocked lil' ol' me a bit to see it displayed here for all to see.

Good idea to have some here who could squash those when they pop up:) I hope Phil will agree and appoint some people.

SHARON!!! You're KS Police now? Woohoo...  :dancin:  :hi5:  I finally have a friend on the force, to help keep me from getting barred:)

.

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♥ Laugh your heart out, dance in the rain. Cherish the memories, ignore the pain. Love and learn, forget and forgive. Because you only have one life to live. ♥

These types of threads / posts are not being submitted by normal members that participate in discussions. Most likely they are posted by very new members and possibly by an ad bot. IMO the best way to minimize this is to have a mechanism in place on sign up that makes it very difficult for bots and time consuming for humans trying to spam a lot of the world quickly. I'm sure a lot of you have seen sites that require a graphic displayed on the screen to be typed in order to sign up. This minimizes bots because they have no way to read graphics. If we don't currently have that feature it could probably be added. Human spammers are probably a bit tougher, but having some type of requirement before allowing posts in the general forum can make it undesirable for human spammers to want to attempt it. On sign up from the graphic screen you can require them to click a link in their email in order to activate the account. You could further limit these required email addresses to non-free ones such as hotmail and yahoo. Then again a lot of people use these. On another site I am in they require participants to write an essay about why they want to be on the site. The essay must be approved by the admin or moderators. You could have a wait time between sign up and ability to post. You could limit the ability to post graphics based on the number of posts they have already submitted. You can limit the ability to post based on a certain number of posts and threads already read. You could require submission of a song to post - but that would be limiting to too many. Perhaps a good one would be to not allow Newbies to create new threads until they have a certain post count or number of points - such as provided by other members. Seems usually spammers create their own threads.

Anyway, those are just some ideas. As I said the human spammers are probably more difficult to stop, but their Achilles Heel is they don't have tons of time to waste if they want to be productive - SO if you make it a bit slower then they will hopefully go elsewhere.

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The Truth Is Out There

Because I don't wish to keep bringing the recent junk to the top of the thread list (and I see it's not yet been removed as of this post at least) I'm posting this here.  Jian is correct, the person that has posted the current spam of "Britney" was the person who posted yesterday AM.  Within an hour after yesterday mornings Spam was removed the SAME spammer returned with the SN "Mahatmagandi" and posted links that needed to be clicked on to be executed.  These links were to the same exact site.  That was (at least) the second time this same spammer returned posting the same site.  Current spam is linked to the same site.

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Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".