Beginners and Beyond

Good news . . . it looks as if RW has a handle on the spam problem. (Read 1300 times)

aponi


never runs the tangents

    It makes me wonder where that whole thing at RWOF is going. Right now it looks like its over, last one out turn off the lights and all but they'll probably eventually get this fixed and brand new runners who don't know the backstory will wander in. It's like the big kill that wiped out the dinosaurs - what?

     

    On the subject of dicks, there is a guy who works at my company named Manly Johnson III, yup so twice someone did that to his own son.

    “Do what I do. Hold tight and pretend it’s a plan!” Doctor Who

    FlippyNoodle


    Not a dude

      If he is a III doesn't that mean someone did that three times?

        Photobucket

        MrNamtor


          If he is a III doesn't that mean someone did that three times?

           You're right flippy

          runfoolery


            Lately rwol has been very slow/freezing when I try to scroll around while reading a thread on my mobile phone. The page seems to load quickly, but then can't move around the page. Never run into that before, anywhere


            delicate flower

              It really does seem like they upgraded without doing one bit of testing. And I am still astonished that they even purchased the upgrade without asking the right questions. I've done maybe 15-20 system upgrades at work over the years and thankfully none have gone as bad as that Pluck upgrade seems to have gone. My boss would have torn me a new asshole.

              <3

              MarjorieAnn3137


              Run to live; live to run

                This  We upgrade our documentation system at work several times a year ( two or three).  You better believe we test the crap out of it first.  And a few things we aren't sure of we beta test live to a few clinics to see if there are kinks or if it even 

                does what the vendor says it does.  We made sure we had the ability to turn on or off some features they give us.  And, we find issues all the time.  others that use that vendor don't test like we do.  They blindly take the 

                upgrades as they come out. I cannot believe they don't test  because we find errors frequently.  So,  we don't

                just take the upgrade right away and it is usually several months between when they offer the upgrade before we 

                test and another several before we turn it on.

                It really does seem like they upgraded without doing one bit of testing. And I am still astonished that they even purchased the upgrade without asking the right questions. I've done maybe 15-20 system upgrades at work over the years and thankfully none have gone as bad as that Pluck upgrade seems to have gone. My boss would have torn me a new asshole.

                Marjorie

                  Is the upgrade the reason for the spam?  I know it seemed to come at the same time, but the spam has been a huge problem all year.

                   

                  I  think the spam seems worse now because no one is there to bump up old threads above it.  Without all of you there with new posts and bumping old threads, the problem has become more obvious, but it's been a problem for a long time.

                  xor


                    "Is the upgrade the reason for the spam?" is a seemingly easy yes/no question, but it is more complex than that.

                     

                    Yup, RWOL has had spam for a long long time.

                     

                    However, they tried to sell us that the upgrade would make it easier for them/us to live through spam or just stop it outright.

                     

                    And as we know, that was not true.  In fact, based on KK's most recent update (which I copied above, there hasn't been a more recent one), it surely sounds like the update has made it harder.

                     

                    The problem with going with off-the-shelf solutions... not just pluck but even the cherished vbulletin that some of you brought up and most certainly open source solutions... is that bad guys have the same exact solutions to mess with in their little backrooms. And discuss with each other.  All it takes is for one bad guy to find an exploit and immediately a thousand bad guys can utilize it. 

                     

                    Anyway.  Yikes.

                     

                    As for "no one there to bump threads above it", kind of.  I definitely get what you mean.  That does not change whether the spam gets posted.  It's the exact same spam... now it just sits there until they disappear it (edit: originally I wrote "delete".  Which is a bit of a lie). And then the  page is blank.  But as hard as some of you used to work to find old threads and write the word "bump" to bubble them up, well, that never did anything about the problem.  It did make that front page look cleaner for a few minutes I reckon.  I know yall tried hard.  Hugs.

                     

                    MrNamtor


                      when the tide goes out you discover who's been swimming naked - Warren Buffet

                      runfoolery


                        The spam rate was definitely higher than normal, though (or at least, that's the way it seemed to me). I think at some point the spammers realized no one was deleting their posts and increased the attack rate. Or maybe the attack rate was always that high and there were enough dumb band-aids on the old version of pluck to block some of it. Either way, it wasn't just the lack of legitimate posts.

                        xor


                          The spam rate was definitely higher than normal, though (or at least, that's the way it seemed to me). I think at some point the spammers realized no one was deleting their posts and increased the attack rate. Or maybe the attack rate was always that high and there were enough dumb band-aids on the old version of pluck to block some of it. Either way, it wasn't just the lack of legitimate posts.

                           

                          All of that could be true.

                           

                          It's also worth pointing out that the old site was a kludge of pluck and custom code.  The new site is vanilla pluck.

                           

                          What's easier for a spammer to figure out... openly available software he can play with in his free time, or a black box with custom code that he can't play with?  

                           

                          Exactly.

                           

                          Plus everything you wrote.

                           

                          LRB


                            The BF was getting spammed non stop this fall we just couldn't see it.  The tell all were the short pages. 

                             

                            s*s has stated that she was deleting spam with this new version as she had been doing previously, and thought we couldn't see it as before.

                             

                            The complaints about the downgrade and spam initially fell on deaf ears.  It wasn't until last weekends all out spam assault spurred an exodus not seen since the slaves left Egypt, that they decided to take action.

                            MrNamtor


                              I really don't think they care about the exodus. I really don't. They probably prefer a rotation of posters, because after a while older posters engage more and more in chat and less and less in posting about running. And it's the running posts that bring the eyeballs to the site.

                               

                              We are not their customers (paying advertisers are). The eyeballs are not their customers, and we are not even the eyeballs.

                               

                              We are free content providers(as LRB alluded to).  You might think of us as unpaid employees.  And employees, unpaid or otherwise, have a shelf life. Just like companies actually do NOT want employees to stay forever, neither do people who own forums want posters to stay forever. And from what I can see of the history of RW, they generally don't.

                              Luke79