ALERT!!

[Beanbean]

Do not open threads by Tony Yeates on the Black Tea or White Tea Forums! Pornography.

[chamekke]

Seems like there's a lot of spam this morning.

If only the spammers would chill out and have a cuppa instead. It would be so much better for them.

[Mary R]

Oh my god, was there ever.

Our apologies to everyone who saw those, ah, images this morning. Our filters and such usually do a good job at keeping the more graphic ones locked up, but occasionally one or two slips through.

The spam has been particularly bad as of late. Adagio's gotten some great press out and about on the internet and TeaChat as a whole has become more and more active over the past couple of months...so the spam rises.

The spam is troublesome and an annoyance to our Chatters, and the Mod Squad is taking steps to help control it. In the meantime, thank you all for your patience and tolerance on the matter.

[Chip]

Welcome to the internet...this is Al Gore's fault.

I knocked off at least 20-30 posts by this guy already. Problem is he changes his IP virtually every time, so he is a career spammer and quite serious about what he does. I also knocked off 4 before finally retiring much later than I should have.

I offer this simple warning..well 2.

Do not open suspicious looking threads...period. We do what we can to clean up TeaChat and it is a very spam resistant and spam free forum. But spammers do what spammers do. Just don't give them the satisfaction. This guy will ultimately quit. They generally do when they finally realize there is no point because we are certainly not giving up on our end.

Do not open suspicious links. Do not open links by new members who have fewer than 6 posts and have been members less than one month!!! Simply put, you do not want to open links of just anyone...and until we know a newbie, don't take the chance. Some spammers will embed their link to make it look like something else. I have contacted the other mods and told them I have adopted a zero tolerance policy regarding this issue. Newbies with less than one month AND less than 6 true posts...his/her links will be removed, no exceptions...period. There is a forum rule for this...I have just been a softie til now.

As Mary stated, there is more activity on the forum which is great. It is what we all want, more posts, more talk about tea. But with it comes more attention by the unscrupulous.

Thank you all for understanding that we are doing all that we can and always considering even more.

[Salsero]

Thanks for the great job you do. You are a couple of dedicated super heros and your good works (while largely invisible) do not go unnoticed.

[Victoria]

The Mods do an excellent job and work really hard, to quickly isolate and remove the spam. I really appreciate their dedication and diligence in doing so. But I feel Adagio should to more to stop it. Why can new members can even post links? And why all these members with the same style of fake names even allowed to become members. Every single one I have seen is in the same format.

The porn was so bad this morning. I have never seen it that bad. Something needs to be done. It's just wrong and we have kids here, ya know? And yes it may be true they can find it anyway, but they may not be looking. Or their parents may have a block on the computer. And if there is a block, I think those posts would make it through. So I think it's a serious problem. Not to mention all the time and effort the Mods spend to remove it all.

[Mary R]

There is a limit on what the TeaChat forum platform can do. We can't, for instance, set a link block on anyone--all the link editing has to be manually done by the Mods. There's also a snafu with member approval. If we set it to manual approval, everyone listed as Admin gets a TON of e-mail in the line of "Approve So and So?" If just Chip and I got this e-mail blitz, it wouldn't be too much of a problem, but Michael and Ilya and everyone else gets it, too...and that's just unfair.

We're walking a tightrope, but I have confidence we'll beat the spam situation yet.

[Salsero]

I have confidence we'll beat the spam situation yet.

Yeh, as soon as people get over this interest in sex.

[Chip]

There is a limit on what the TeaChat forum platform can do. We can't, for instance, set a link block on anyone--all the link editing has to be manually done by the Mods. There's also a snafu with member approval. If we set it to manual approval, everyone listed as Admin gets a TON of e-mail in the line of "Approve So and So?" If just Chip and I got this e-mail blitz, it wouldn't be too much of a problem, but Michael and Ilya and everyone else gets it, too...and that's just unfair.

We're walking a tightrope, but I have confidence we'll beat the spam situation yet.

Tough times call for tough measures...I will be re proposing new member approval before posting as a temporary measure to turn the tide.

This issue is possibly the only area of contention in the realm of moderators and adagio admin. Adagio is always very supportive of the moderators. I have heard we trust you to do what is right many times. This is the only area where we were vetoed.

This feature can be turned on and off as easily as flicking a switch. So, we suffer with a ton of emails for a week or two til this passes. I have seen enough porn pics on TeaChat in the last 2-3 weeks to last a lifetime. Moderators must open the offending post in order to obtain the IP for banning purposes. This could be prevented by not allowing this pornagrapher to post in the first place. Members are being exposed to porn regularly over the last few weeks.

My fuse is very short right now, because of this. People are asking me if I am alright...it is wearing on me...

[chamekke]

I've been a member of far too many promising forums that died because they fell victim to spammers and no one could be bothered to go in afterwards to clean up the masses of unwanted postings! Very sad.

Member pre-approval is the simplest way to deal with this problem. If someone really wants to join TeaChat, they shouldn't be discouraged by having to provide their bona fides up front. (It wouldn't have discouraged me, at any rate )

So - here's one vote in support of your proposal.

[Chip]

I've been a member of far too many promising forums that died because they fell victim to spammers and no one could be bothered to go in afterwards to clean up the masses of unwanted postings! Very sad.

Member pre-approval is the simplest way to deal with this problem. If someone really wants to join TeaChat, they shouldn't be discouraged by having to provide their bona fides up front. (It wouldn't have discouraged me, at any rate )

So - here's one vote in support of your proposal.

Thanx, chamekke!!!

I do want to stress that adagio has done a lot at our request which has already greatly reduced spam and prevented it from ever hitting the boards.

So, hats off to them!!!

We need to do more right now, even if it is temporary!

[Victoria]

I'm all for Chip's temporary fix.
In the long run I'm hoping the sytem can be tweaked somehow.
I don't think Admin or the Mods need any more work.

[Beanbean]

I think I was the lucky gal who stumbled on a couple of the spam threads this morning. Talk about an eye-opener! I'm just glad my nine year old son was not looking over my shoulder when I opened the threads.

I have only just found this site so I hope that I have enough posts to sneak in under the wire. I don't often admit this but I honestly couldn't post a link to save my soul so I'm pretty harmless in that respect. I do admit to having an amazingly rich and colorful vocabulary but I promise not to unleash it. Well, not often anyhow.

Seriously, I'm only here for the tea.

[silverneedles]

well, whoever does the webadmin should try to implement no posting of links/images for new members or add good captchas to register...
i'm guessing if the website gets on a list of 'spammable' places, you wont be able to do much anymore.
blocking IPs isnt that useful unless mass traffic from 1 place...

[daughteroftheKing]

Before Chip and Mary were elected/appointed, spam would sometimes sit for quite a while before being deleted. Thank you for all your work to keep this board a place where we all like to share/learn/laugh.
Another non-tea board I'm on takes a day or two to get approval as a newbie. Didn't hurt my feelings at all to have to wait, in fact, it made me even more appreciative to become a member.