Extra ways of dealing with forum spam?

[tracks78]

Hi there! I see a lot of spam on my forum lately, and there's a couple things I would like to be able to do, not sure how though.

Most important would be detecting a phrase as spam, so it goes in the moderation queue. The option to do with with specific words is useful but what we really need is marking the phrase "live stream" as spam. When I put a phrase in quotes in this setting box it does not work, it won't recognize this as a valid entry. Is there some workaround?

Another would be limiting the ability to post a link for users below a certain post count threshold. So for users <5 posts, it goes into moderation queue.

[In Omnibus]

The "Detect Words As Spam" function detects individual words, not phrases. The "Detect URLs As Spam" function checks all posts with more URL links than the value entered. I'm not sure either is going to resolve your issue. Do you have the StopForumSpam function set up? I would recommend setting it to check both e-mail addresses and IP addresses but not user names. You could also use the "Question And Answer" function in the Human Verification Manager. Set a question that only legitimate members of your forum would likely be able to answer, one that requires something other than a "yes" or "no" answer. Something that can't be checked by bots would be preferable. That would virtually prevent new registrations of spam accounts.

[Wayne Luke]

The Akismet functionality provides a level of checking on the post as well. This requires a separate key from the Akismet site. It provides a filter based on what is reported as spam from a large number of websites, mostly Wordpress.

[tracks78]

Thanks for the reply guys.
Yes I use Stopforumspam and askimet, and recaptcha v.2
I do not use question&answer, mostly because I don't know enough regex to account for all the variability in how a person might answer.

Is there a plugin that can detect phrases as spam?

How about marking links as spam below a certain threshold?
Would it be possible to have users <5 posts be in a special usergroup where posts await moderation, then >5 it automatically moves them to the registered user usergroup?
How would a person do something like that?

[Wayne Luke]

How about marking links as spam below a certain threshold?
Would it be possible to have users <5 posts be in a special usergroup where posts await moderation, then >5 it automatically moves them to the registered user usergroup?
How would a person do something like that?

You would want to moderate the registered usergroup and after 5 approved posts, move them to a new usergroup with more permissions. You can set up Usergroup Promotions in the AdminCP under Usergroups -> Promotions.

[tracks78]

I have thousands of users in the registered usergroup at the moment, would they all get automatically promoted to the new usergroup since they already have a higher postcount, or would existing registered users need to be manually moved?

[Wayne Luke]

Once the promotion task runs, they would be automatically moved.