MONITORS-spammers have taken over
 

Spamming not reported because you would link to their site from the title. PLEASE monitor.

We are working on it. Please use the triangle to report spam posts. However, our monitors simply don't see posts like this unless they happen to be perusing the forums themselves.

In order to triangle them we have to first click on them and MANY of them are web addresses which could take us to unsavory virus ridden sites.

Clicking on a link WITHIN a thread MIGHT be a problem, but there is no danger from opening a thread here.

I don't know how you can say that clicking on a title that is a link isn't a problem. I am not going to do it. Maybe elberko AND the monitors haven't noticed that the title is the LINK.

AND in response to Doug Stallings, that is why I triangled my own post so you WOULD see it. LOL

Oh for heaven's sake. There is no danger to any of you. The title is not the link.

Anyway, this is one instance of its not paying to be an early bird. I have never seen more than one or two of these threads.

Tempest in a tea pot.

Doug: Just try to block all titles which appear to be links, and block all first posts by new members that contain a link.

I just clicked on this new one.
It opened the thread--nothing more.


http://www.fodors.com/community/unit...kin-active.cfm

Agree that is wold seem to be fairly simple to identify many of these in advance - and post with a url in the title or first-time poster with a url/link in the body of the post could be held until someone can check to be sure that are legitimate posts (I can imagine this would be almost all advertisers of all sorts of weird products, never mind those - I have seen at least 3 - who are advertising sales of fake passports, licenses and other official documents).

>Doug: Just try to block all titles which appear to be links, and block all first posts by new members that contain a link.

This imo.

Also some kind of expiration date on threads would be useful imo, it seems everyone except Fodor's uses them. Travel info is timely, so forcing people to create new theads isn't a bad idea in this case imo. Also from what we've seen, nearly all the dredging on Fodor's is specifically for spamming purposes.

Well something's changed. Because there didn't used to be so many of them getting thru.

Thank you Gretchen! We are definitely doing our best to monitor all spammers and value your help. If we see a title that is a link it will absolutely be removed. Meanwhile any flagging (the little triangle) is appreciated!

> NewbE on Mar 30, 16 at 8:16am

> Oh for heaven's sake. There is no danger to any of you. The title is not the link.

Depending on one's browser and plugins, any text in the correct format might be processed as a link. I'm with Gretchen on this one.

We can now remove this thread. I'll triangle it again!! LOL

Instead of clicking the triangle, I right-click the poster's name, open it in a new tab, and report him or her from their profile page. IMO it's better to remove the person posting the spam instead of individually reporting the posts.

Lee Ann

I triangle the threads as i see them!

And they are back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

good point suze. There was never this volume of spam before.

Editors what is going on? Doug says there is no one keeping tabs unless an editor happens to be cruising through the forums? Maybe it's time to have someone do this.

You can imagine how serious travelers who have been referred to Fodor's or find it online might not join or use these forums as serious travel places.

It's hardly a new thing. Remember all the (Korean?) posts a few months ago?

Second the suggestion for adding an expiration date to posts. They should still be retrieved and read, but not added too. This will help with some of the spam and also prevent wasted advice when you notice, too late, that the thread is very old.

On the contrary, our monitors are constantly looking through the forums, especially being on the lookout for spam. What I said was that writing a single post in the forums is not the best way to alert us to an issue with spam. The best way is to report spam posts, which come back overnight. (Sadly, we are only human and aren't all working 24 hours a day.) However, Amanda is on this and is working hard every day to take down spam and ban the posters, and we will continue to do that. It's an ongoing battle, but you'll see spam posts accumulate every morning, and then they will quickly go away as soon as Amanda makes her sweep. And she's not working alone.

>>What I said was that writing a single post in the forums is not the best way to alert us to an issue with spam. The best way is to report spam posts, <<

Also -- I often (really often) see folks post 'triangled'. That seems REALLY counterproductive IMO. Just triangle the thing - no need to announce doing it. Adding a 'triangled' post, just guarantees the old thread stays topped after the spam post is deleted.

If one just triangles it - when the the offending post is gone the thread will sink back where it belongs . . .

Thanks, Doug, appreciate your insight as well as the unfortunate housekeeping you, Amanda and others have to do.

Amanda and Doug can't work 24/7/365, but a computer program can. Add to the posting routine an algorithm that could work like this:

Is this a first post on the day a new member joins? No --> Post. Yes --> Is there a link? No --> Post Yes --> Delay posting for manual review in the morning.

Show this to your programmer and ask that it be done.

Triangling to get mods' attention.

Yeah, I'm sure that has never occurred to them to do.

This morning, It's gotten out of hand completely. Can't even find the legitimate posts! This forum is not the first to be inundated, but others have responded more quickly and effectively at the code/system level. Guess Fodor's doesn't value their regular posters enough to throw at the problem the finances, technical expertise, and time needed to stop the spam for good.

Of the 25 first posts this morning, 15 were spam or 60%. This is crazy. You need to find a fix.

Every morning, the front page is at least 50% spam. I go thru and report them, but soon I'm just going to give up on this site.

Thanks for your concern, and please keep flagging the spam posts. This happens every morning, and within a few hours they are all taken down.

Doug, I appreciate what a hassle this is for you all. It must not be fun to come into work every morning and clean out the Spam first thing. However, I frequent other forums, travel, medical, hobby-related, and none of them have this problem. Why is the Fodors US Board the target of all of this and what do all these other websites, some of which are your competitors, doing that Fodors isn't?

There has to be an answer better than "wait a couple of hours and we will clean it up." What is the long term strategy for this? Over the last month it has only gotten worse.

>>Why is the Fodors US Board the target of all of this . . .<<

Not that this solves anything - but spam hits almost every Forum over night/every night -- not just the US board. Even the Help Forum gets it which I think is sort of ironic. Currently more than half of the spam is on the US board but in the past it has been Asia, or Africa or whatever.

The only spam free zone is the Lounge . . .