Last month, we had an influx of spammers who would post duplicates of past comments on Felicifia in seemingly relevant threads, with a link to spam in their signature. These folks were deleted on sight.

However, I've now seen an influx of accounts - all a name ending with a number -- that post their username in their signature and make a first post that seems completely legitimate (though, honestly, not all that helpful or insightful) in a relevant thread, almost always necro'd from many months of nondiscussion. While not directly spamming, they tend to confuse me and slow me down and don't add much, and they don't seem to ever post again.

I'd bet with 95% confidence that they're spammers (at worst) and sockpuppeters (at best), though I welcome any of them to come forward to the contrary, to which I'll apologize.

What are people's thoughts about action against this issue?

If the post doesn't engage in a specific way with the topic then if the user has a link I delete on sight, otherwise I'll err on the side of caution.

I'm curious about the idea of sleeper spam -- you (or a computer program) post a comment that appears innocent at first, but then a month later after everyone has forgotten it, you (or a follow up computer program) go back and edit it to include a spam link. Because the thread is so old and dead, no one cares and notices. Spam ensues.

It's what I would do if I wanted to get spam onto a forum. Thoughts?

PS: Taking down Felicifia seems like a good target for anti-utilitarians.

That happens quite often. A number in the username means bot, 19 times out of 20, so it might be worth putting up a caveat in the intro forum that if you have a generic username and either you have a siglink or first post doesn't prove you're *not* a bot, your account's likely to be deleted. Seems a bit of an aggressive intro though.

For record:

On "Negative Average Preference Utilitarianism":

Brian Tomasik wrote:

Doyle33 wrote:I don't believe so. They can very well coexist. Preference Utilitarianism attempts to produce the best consequences for the majority. The "best consequence" here is quite subjective in terms of what exactly it is the the majority prefers to satisfy them. In most cases, we may assume happiness is conclusive to pleasure. But in that case can be perceived as the opposite of pain. Negative Utilitarianism, despite the conotation, does concentrate on the idea of harm and pain. But it works to attempt to control these things, causing the least amount of damge. Even If it will benefit society as a whole to kill off half of society, just so that the remaining half of society is happy, than that is what must be best.

I love spammers.

The above text is the top-rated Yahoo Answer on this page. One plausible way the spamming algorithm works is (1) Google the title of the forum (in this case, {Negative Average Preference Utilitarianism} without quotes), (2) look down the results until you see a Q&A result like Yahoo Answers, and (3) copy the answer text onto the forum. No idea if this is what's actually going on.

The "Doyle33" signature looks all set up to bloom into a spam link when the warm spring weather arrives.

Let the record reflect that spambots are now no longer making usernames with numbers at the end.

For the record:

Posted from "jahid123" (no signature) in the introduction board under the thread "Newbie":

Hi All

Just wanted to Stop in to say hi and also to introduce myself here! The Boards look extremely interesting and I can’t wait to become a member of the community!

Besides, I would like to suggest the moderators and the administrators of this site that there should be a place for every new member for their introduction. Majority of the people prefer to give their introduction before they could start up.

So if my suggestion is logical and if it does make any sense then an introduction thread should be started here.

Thanks,

~

My response (being fooled):

It's been the tradition to use this "Welcome to Felicifia" subforum for individual introduction threads. Perhaps that should be more clear!

Anyways, welcome! What about the boards interests you?

~

Arepo's response:

Arepo wrote:Clear enough that even a spambot gets it?

~

The exact text of the spambot's post is on many other forums. Judgement in favor of the petitioner in the form of one deleted thread.

Generally, I would like people to publish this specific kind of evidence before making any accusations, because I worry we might get to a point where someone with poor English is going to be confused for a spambot, which is not really where I want to see this forum go with regard to false positives / false negatives.

It's not really the poor English that gives it away (though it's a factor), so much as the unnecessarily long and meaningless number at the end of their name (where '1' or '1989' for eg might make some kind of sense) combined with the complete lack of engagement with any specific detail of the thread or forum. In this case the fact that it was asking for something we blatantly *had* made it more apparent, but even without that I’d have given at least 20 to 1 odds it was one. I think it’s just something that gets easier to spot with more exposure.