Hedir Review : Community based Spam controller for phpbb

bret

This is truly an innovation and thanks to our community members for coming up with these unique ideas.

Background
Hedir always supported postings by guests as many of us are not comfortable in giving away our email addresses to a new site. Guest postings had its own darker side with spammers forcing you to redo the strategy. When we started Hedir we had allowed guest postings for all the forums but later due to hardworking and dedicated spammers we were forced to stop it!

At Hedir we always wanted to allow guest postings and this community based spam controller with the help of existing one (Guests are not allowed to post urls) we will like to give it another try.

How does it work?
Now every post has two additional attributes

Is it a spam? (Yes or No) (A)
Community Spam Value (B)

Our system has few attributes

Hedir community value of members (Currently it is number of posts but we are working on a better system). (C)
Threshold for community spam value. (D)
Moderators' stand and moderators' weight (currently moderators have same strength as a community member in this system). (E)

Step 1: A post is made (if this is the first post then taken as a thread) (A = 0 and B =0)
Step 2: Community members can vote it as a spam or no spam. (A = 0 and B = B+ cC, where c is positive if voted as spam else negative)
Step 3: Once it reaches the threshold community spam value (B > D) we flag it as a spam (A =1)
Step 4: When A =1 and is not deleted it goes to special panel for moderators. Moderators can either delete it or flag it as no spam. If the moderator flags it as no spam the value of B = B + (c x E x C), where c is negative. It rechecks whether B<D and if B <D it will make it A=0 else it will wait for other moderators to see.
Step 5: A smile on everyone's face.

Will this system work?
I have a strong feeling that with the existing spam controllers we can allow guest postings and help Hedir get more reviews and votes. Only the time can unveil other problems.

Challenges that are keeping us busy
The performance of forums: We do understand that with every additional SQL statement the performance (loading speed) is challenged. At display we are not doing any query only we have combined the A factor to the existing queries.

Still we are keeping a watch over the performance and if proven helpful then we might release it as a phpbb mod. I am sure many other moderators running similar phpbb based forums will appreciate the additional supporting hand.

How will this help Hedir?
It will help us allow guest posting – a very demanding feature. Also each member is empowered to act as a moderator with senior and contributing members more voting power. This will give an additional community tool to play with.

If you think this tool will be help please add your comments. Your feedbacks and suggestions will help us improve. Looking forward to make it a phpbb mod.

Thanks,
Bret

masteri5 · Joined: 26 Sep 2006 Posts: 283 10546 Hedir Points

Bret

Thanks for the explaination. I recently began to see the spam button and wondered if it simply removed the post if anyone clicked on it. I think that would have been a poor system. Looks like you have considered all the angles.

I think it is a great feature.

bret · Posted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:02 pm Post subject:

We are still working on it. If it is able to stop the spams with the community control then we will start rocking again with guest posts. Guest posts are very important see http://www.hedir.com/introduction/about17942.html (almost all comments are from guests and very valuable comments).

Hedir Developer · Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 451 16369 Hedir Points

Hi,

congrats to bret for such a well explanatory posting. Smile

I hope this will help our community members to use the spam controller section properly.

regards,
Josh

nozzmoking · Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 11:05 am Post subject:

I think this is a unique way of controlling the spam problem. PCBguy's recent post on the Gmail trick has certainly highlighted the need to be able to accept legitimate guest posts and now this new spam tool enables us to do just that! Great Job! Very Happy

bret · Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 3:38 pm Post subject:

Yes, we are still testing the performance. Everything is looking so great and we can allow guest postings soon.

Hedir Developer · Joined: 18 Jan 2006 Posts: 451 16369 Hedir Points

Hi,