Get the Most out of spam Members

[makemysitepopular]

So you've created a new forum and you are struggling to get your member count higher.

Instead of getting a huge amount of posting visitors you are greeted with a number of spam advertising pharmaceutical drugs or pornography.

Here's a trick to dealing with spam and getting your member count higher.

Don't ban those spam members, instead change their password to something (don't use a password that you use anywhere else)

The result? 1 Spam member who won't be able to login (they won't know how to retreive their password, after all its a bot)
And 1+ Member count

Ah payback is sweet

 

[icygangsta]

If you ban ,it will have the same result.
it can't login but its still a member.

;/

 

[CyberFreak]

Additionally people can notice that alot of the members are spambots by there names and that will backfire on your forum.

 

[makemysitepopular]

That is true, but for a starting off forum its always good to have a few extra members even so.

Most of the time you can tell that a member joined due to post exchanges too so there are always ways to pickup on things

But the general public would see a member count more than the names

Thanks
Adrian

 

[CyberFreak]

Yeah but if the newest user is buycheapviagra or something it wouldn't look good and would signal that alot of them probably are spammers.

 

[makemysitepopular]

Understood.
i've never actually get those ones so specifically. You can always change the name to something else.

 

[Killman]

This has happened to me a couple time's before. I just ban, rename them, and just leave it at that.

It is good because it increases your member count.

It is bad because it increases your members with no posts at all count.

 

[Marlins Troll]

This is a pointless idea. -roll-

 

[makemysitepopular]

I have seen so many members on forums requesting people just sign up to forums and they will return 10 posts for just signing up.

Its worth 10 posts to some people to just get 1 single member join, not even post

So its pointless to you but I can assure you it works.

 

[CyberFreak]

It works only if you do it a small amount otherwise it is way too obvious and has an opposite impression on the guests.

 

[makemysitepopular]

Yeah definitely.
Its something to be watched for1
Thanks Fowler for your input

 

[Zyenet]

I do have some spam bots on my forum, but none of them have completely obvious names. Odd thing is, once they register, they login, but never post.

 

[Brandon]

When spam members join i just edit there post to make it look like its a new member 😛

 

[Zakattak]

That is a great idea brandon 😀

 

[Brandon]

thanks. it works ;D

 

[dremits]

After banning, renaming and editing the posts, it would have been easier to create a use yourself.

 

[Jason76]

The best way is to keep them out, to begin with. One way is by asking people to spell a word backward (during registration).

Anyway, for spam members already there, it would be best to delete them, as their presence provides misleading stats (A forum full of a lot of spammers isn't full of "real" members).

 

[Lord Saru]

Some admins are obsessed with stats!

 

[lunorian]

I don't like faking member counts. Those members get flagged into our internal anti-spam system which pushes information out to multiple anti-spam services. Of course registrations are heavily screened by NoCaptcha, ProjectHoneypot, and until you have 10 rep (which takes a while) your posts are scanned by Akismet, if for some reason you get past ProjectHoneypot and Akismet don't catch you, our users can flag you as spam and your post is submitted to Akismet and flagged for further evaluation and site moderators are notified. Beyond that IP Addresses listed in https://www.stopforumspam.com/downloads/toxic_ip_cidr.txt (StopForumSpam Toxic IP Ranges List) are null routed (server won't even respond to their requests). I hate spammers so much so I have made a huge spammers to stop them before they ever get a chance to harm the site.

 

[Bluezone777]

A quality of a forum is not relegated to how many members you have. A forum can have many members and be a terrible forum and vice versa. I much rather have a quality forum then one that just looks good by some rather arbitrary measure like member count.

I find it rather disheartening to see so much effort be put into making a forum appear to be worthwhile instead of putting the effort into actually making a forum into a place that's worthwhile to be a part of.