Mac OS X forum: To alexnikle100. Post deleted.

There's got to be a way to private message folks about these policy breeches, instead of creating full announcements to them and everyone about what happened.

In these Jive forums the Moderators are not able to edit out offensive material in posts, so our options are limited to delete, or leave alone. We can ask the Forum Admin to edit posts, but since this is an international forum and some of the Mods are elsewhere than in the US, (I'm in the UK), there is an inbuilt delay in such messages being received and acted upon. So where time is of the essence we decide to delete.

But then, we walk a fine line with deletions. We delete posts for a variety of Forum Policy violations, but for some of them, the poster deserves an explanation why.

Obvious spammers, in my view, do not deserve any explanation. But with a first time poster, that is sometimes difficult to judge. This person was a first time poster, and his Private Message option in his profile had not been set. In fact that is par for the course for spammers. They register simply to post their advertising then never return.

So, I could, simply, have deleted the post and not left a message. But in this case, I saw the post arrive using the forum's Real-time activity. I deleted it within a minute of its arrival.

So why leave a message? I believe such spammers like to see what they have posted, (the obvious reason for their posting is search engine ratings), and so they will return to the forum listing to have a look. If they see my message there, then perhaps they will "get the message", and move on.

Mark

If they stayed the spammer gets some kind of rank improvements on google.

We noticed this many years ago and this is why such posts will always be deleted. Please keep deleting them.
Bob

The spammers will use any loop hole to get their stuff on boards. There are no so obvious spam like "I found this site", "How to rip a DVD", "How to (do this or that)" and other such posts that fall into the spam category.

There is another category that was harder to detect and that was in Web design forums where people would ask others what is wrong with their site. You can imagine the spammers tried there as well. The boards are fairly clear of spam and such so while the bar is set low they could always spam elsewhere.

Another reason we've deleted a post is if it is a malicious web site or a download we can't vet.

Hope this gives you some idea of the parameters that most of the moderators use. Let's use the moderator's forum if you need more.
Bob

In these Jive forums the Moderators are not able to edit out offensive material in posts, so our options are limited to delete, or leave alone.

So can you tell me what's good about Jive software? At first glance (and second, and third...), it seems extremely limited, nonintuitive, and difficult to read. Yet I've heard it's really expensive. What, pray tell, is the attraction?

Just ask the Great Mystic Seer of all Knowledge.

Google alexnikle100, this isn't the only place he's been deleted from recently.

Also http://www.stopforumspam.com/ is a good site, I use it all the time. That's not spam, I'm a Mod elsewhere.

For an example many times usernames stand out as obvious spammers. They register and then spam later. When I see those I check, it takes a few seconds, if they show up you've stopped spam before it even hits. Many times they spam multiple forums before they're stopped, so we won't have to move multiple posts by banning them early.

Here there is not so much spam as the bar is set very low. Even tagline spam is not allowed. Thankfully all the moderators and our friendly super moderator has agreed to such a low threshold.
Bob