Why are the forums filled with spammers?

It doesn't matter which forum category you look in (except general sports discussion because nobody goes there), you will find some idiot posting a link to a site where you can watch free movies. Not just one post, multiple posts from multiple users.

Does Gamespot not monitor these things? Or is that not considered spam to them? I find it incredibly irritating, I don't want to see a page full of stupid blogs about free movies, I actually want to see what the community has to say. I don't want to have to go through 5 pages to find a decent topic because of all the spam.

Or am I the only one that feels this way??

It's an ongoing epidemic that's been affecting this site for quite some time. Best I can suggest is to "flag" the ones you know are spam. Eventually, the mods will get to removing/locking them.

I don't understand spam bots. Does anyone actually follow those links?

yup you new here, there was a huge revamp for this site so this is not going the right way for a long time, i think the problem is that you can sign up with google twitter acount and thats were the most spams come from

I always wondered that myself :/

And as before mentioned just flag the post and move on, someone will get to it eventually.

It is quite annoying.

It is an issue we have been combating.

That would be unfortunate for some users.For example , when I first joined Gamespot community ,my sole aim was to seek help for my YLODing PS3.Had that rule applied ,I would've most likely lost my hard-gained PS3 !

I mean , if I had had to make 25 post before creating a topic explaining my problem with the console ,I would've just left the place immediately and I would've never found out the cure for my dying beloved console ! (which was thermal compound :D )

spammers aren't exclusive to GameSpot, any site that has forums has to deal with them.

Gotta be honest with you , sometimes when there's a football match ,which I can't watch on TV ,I get tempted to follow the the links ,but I've actually never seen video streaming.It's just smoke and mirrors.

But my guess is that it deals with them way better than GS does. I mean I would flag a spam topic just to come back hours after and find it still lingering in the front page of OT.

If you need a link for the World Cup PM me and then you can tell us whether it was just smoke and mirrors.

No ,fortunately TV shows all of the WC matches.I meant some of La Liga matches or Champions League matches which TV ,annoyingly , just doesn't broadcast around here.

Mods are volunteers after all, we have lives too. =P

Certainly I don't blame you guys, I blame GS's staff instead. They need to come up with something to combat this issue properly and that might involve tweaking their mods crew.

They seem to been horrible after the site revamp. Isn't updating supposed to make it better? It shouldn't be totally up to the mods to delete posts after made. Something should be done to stop the post/bot to begging with.

We need you more though. :P

It's called backlinking. When a link is on a web page and points to another page, the page that is being pointed towards gets a higher search engine ranking position. The spamming is obviously automated, so some person is just pushing a single button to generate hundreds, if not thousands of these posts across various forums. Our forum isn't being specifically targeted, our forum is just in a list of hundreds (or thousands). It doesn't even matter how effective it is for them to spam our forum, even if it's ineffective, it takes more work to remove this forum from their spam list as opposed to keep spamming it.

The program they use specifically is called Scrapebox, or a much more expensive variation of it (XRumer)

Some basic internet 101 for you guys. Moderators at least should definitely know this stuff :)

Yup it's been a noticeable issue ever since the rehaul of the site and it's pissing me off.

Maybe GS needs to recruit some more mods. I understand that mods have lives too, only it's weird that almost all of them remembered that right after the site redesign. I don't remember things being so bad before that. At least we still got Alli, Hallenbeck and some others to stand up for and guard us from the evil spammers.

ok this is an exaggeration :P

I'm up really late until 4:30 am and maybe 5 am MT getting rid of spambots most of the time now so if any users are also up at that time just flag the posts and I may look in the queue for the flagged spam posts/threads.

Is there any sort of max number of posts required to make threads? Something like that would surely help.

They're most likely bots but some could be human spammers.

Yeah. That ticks me off as well and gets annoying. I'm just here in the dark trying to watch the new Transformers Movie [2014 1080p BLU-RAY] at this www.movies4free.gov@yahoo.com/free/premium/.net.co.uk (you just need to register) and these spammers come up while I try to browse www.gamespot.com.

Download for free at: http://www.gamespot.com/forums/offtopic-discussion-314159273/why-are-the-forums-filled-with-spammers-31417360/

Maybe a CAPTCHA will help a little? Only when making a thread you have to successfully pass through one of those annoying boxes.

the spam bots are everywhere

@Wistful_Gamer: I think CAPTCHA is a great idea

Not well enough, apparently.

This is a good idea. Also another good idea would be to bring back the more detailed reporting system. On the force we don't give every incident the same radio call-sign. Some are domestic disturbances, some are traffic incidents, welfare checks, gun crimes, etc. If everything was given the same call-sign(as the GameSpot system currently works by just marking things as "flagged") we'd never be able to prioritize anything.

Well, I can't really judge this website too much. They've never been known for being too intelligent. Just having heavy-handed moderators.

Realistically, though, the team that actually works on the website doesn't read the forums. The same goes for the staff members that are given positions related to community management. So this thread will fall on deaf ears, as usual. How the heck can you have a position dealing with the community yet you never actually talk to the community? Would kind of be like having Oscar the Grouch start walking beats without a lick of training beforehand. Makes absolutely no sense.

Hey guys, let me be the mod that cleans up our forums.

Dave for Mod 2014.

Dave has my vote too - he will be in charge of all spam related issues. We shall call him....The Spaminator

We need someone with a sense of humor as a mod. To balance out BranK being so...uptight. I could have gone further but he gets off modding me. Which surprises me because he doesn't seem like the kind of person that would get off on anything.

That would be a bitch. But if it solved the spam problem 100%...sigh...I might support it (not that my support counts for anything :P).

A capcha and one of those nifty puzzle maze games

As a mod, I would see the lessons that can be learned from letting our users have playground level fights and the beauty of letting other users judge the fighters. Too often I see threads locked because people have devolved into shitting the place up. Let us get dirty and stew in our shit.

@dave123321: I personally would love to judge the keyboard warriors - there are very few things in this world better than sitting back, relaxing and watching a good ol fashioned forum fight.

Change we can believe in!

I'm awake now and I've brought my hammer. If you spot any spam I've missed, flag it and I'll blow it out of the water.

Let the flagging begin

It does nothing to solve spam. By supporting CAPTCHA, you're supporting nothing more than your own inconvenience. Every forum-spam program comes with an anti-captcha. I mean, how do you think the spam forum accounts were made in the first place?

The best solution, as previously stated, is to place a restriction on thread-starting. In my opinion, you should have a minimum of 50 posts before you can start a thread. Sounds simple, smart, effective.

Requiring a certain amount of posts to start a thread would be inconvenient for those who joins just to ask a simply question and may also turn off legitimate posters from joining. For that reason, I wouldn't support such an idea.

You great assistance is very much appreciated. You should really not need to do that.

Another idea is that any thread with external links must be approved by a mod before being posted (whitelist the famous most-used websites). This will probably cause some inconvenience to the mods, but it'll help reduce the spam threads. A very quick look at a thread will be enough to determine whether it's a spam or not.

I sleep until 1pm MT usually now a days since I don't do much now a days I wouldn't be doing this every night lol. Only on nights I can handle staying up. I usually stay up until 3:30am for Ramadan anyway.

I wake up late now a days. I'm talking a month break since I just finished summer school and I don't really want to do much during ramadan.

What happens if the links are broken or link back to this site like some of the spam threads I noticed recently? Spambots will probably find a way to circumvent this restriction easily.And that will require a lot of work to implement especially on more active boards like SW.

Do moderators look like site engineers that can be here 24/7?

Anyways I agree with what you guys have said. Its not like other moderators don't agree with it, its just that we can't do much other than purge threads when we see them. I cleaned OT the other day from left over spam that was not seen. I check. :(

Do you guys want me to move this to bugs and feedback?

Because you touch yourself at night.