Admin Almighty
Don’t you just love it when members think the admins are some all powerful entity?
It’s been happening a lot lately. Someone spots some spam and complains about how we don’t do anything about it. Or if they see some person offering illegal templates, they get pissed off at us because we don’t ban the user right away. It’s not like we know every single post that is being put up on our forums. It’s not like we keep track of every single user.
But this isn’t enough for some members. They want to hear us go, we should be acting faster, banning more, deleting more. We should be taking peremptory action, dammit! Sure.
So for anyone reading that acts like this, you should look at it from our perspective. We’re extremely busy; we have business to take care of other then reading each post ever created, and we actually do have lives of our own. If you spot some spam, then report it. It doesn’t help anyone when you reply to a thread bitching at us — if anything, you’re giving the spammer exactly what they want by bumping their thread to the top of the list. And before you start getting pissed off at us for taking too long to ban scammers, note that we discuss each situation and try to be as fair as we can. One persons hearsay isn’t quite enough.
April 6th, 2005 at 9:55 pm
Roger That.
No but seriously some people can be cynical little sh*ts, who don’t realise that we have more of a life than themselves.
April 7th, 2005 at 7:35 am
Most spam at my computerforum gets deleted within a 12 hour period, quite often much sooner which is not too bad. But banning users is rarely something which is discussed, judgements are made on the spot, of course members who have been banned have a right to appeal that decision and often do.
April 7th, 2005 at 11:46 am
We get to spam quite quickly too, but it’s never fast enough it seems.
As for banning, we give it more thought. Drive-by spammers are banned on the spot most of the time, but if someone simply says “this member is a scammer”, we can’t take that one members word for it. Obvious scams are taken care of, of course, but if a person is just selling a domain or whatever we like to give them a chance while at the same time providing a safe environment for the rest of the members. Even though we say “buyer beware” and to research before you agree to a deal, we still feel like we should keep an eye out.
Ads and offers forums cause nothing but trouble. I don’t think they’re worth it.
April 7th, 2005 at 12:47 pm
What’s this about having to be logged in to post now? How inconvenient.
Anyhoo, sometimes, I’d like to ban people for badmouthing the admins and mods. Heh. Wouldn’t that kick up a s***storm?
April 7th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Hey prissed
When did you redesign your site? It looks really good!
April 7th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Thanks, Chris. I redid it a couple of weeks ago…just before getting into this terrible ordeal with that client of mine.
April 7th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
That’s too bad
I hope you get your money back. I guess you’re not dealing with that client ever again 
It’s to stop comment spam. But everyone seems to hate it so I think I’ll just go and disable the logged-in requirement and put the image verification back for logged-out users only.
I’ve been meaning to code some hacks that are for members-only, though. Like a “whats new since my last visit” type of thing so users (especially me ;)) can see what new comments or entries there are. Kinda like the “last post” information you get when visiting a forum.
April 7th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
“What’s new” stuff would be cool.
BTW, I’m just giving you grief about the logged-in thing. Heh. C’mon, I need to take my stress out on someone. You’re young, you can take it.
April 7th, 2005 at 9:01 pm
I know
April 8th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
I would leave the login in place, most people who post here seem to be friends/acquaintances and they can take the time to register.
I had my own trouble in the for sale section, not sure how to deal with it, but I am now only allowing regular members with 100+ posts to post in that section, wont eliminate fraud, but would certainly cut down on the fraudsters. Would like to find a way to properly enforce this rule in an automated fashion, rather then moderating each post.