Since the redesign, especially in the past few weeks, we have been hit by quite a wave of spammy advertising posts to this forum. There was an especially bad one a week or so ago where the offender posted almost 10 duplicate threads advertising some product! There are a few simple steps that you can follow to facilitate an admin’s removal of such threads and the offenders halted in their spamming. 1. Don’t feed that advertising troll. Leave a SINGLE message on the first spammy thread created and/or the user’s talkpage asking the perpetuator to stop posting such advertisements such as this one: “Hi there. I noticed you left advertising posts in the wikiHow forums. (OR “I noticed this thread has been created with advertising as its sole purpose”) Would you please refrain from creating such threads as wikiHow is not an advertising site and advertising here is against our policy. Repeated spam could possibly result in you being blocked for a short duration by an admin. Thank you for understanding!” Keep in mind that there is a good chance the person will want this kind of attention, so repeated posts to ‘stop’ on all their threads may encourage greater efforts to spam. 2. Notify an admin. Leave a message on an active admin’s talkpage notifying them of the situation so that measures such as blocking/coaching/deletion of spam threads can be carried out. You can also post to the administrator notice board informing admins that way. * http://www.wikihow.com/wikiHow:Administrator-Notice-Board
Thanks to the people I’ve seen who have been making an effort to notify such spammers. I’m pretty sure there are plenty more! Thanks for patrolling the forums. @MatthewMiles02127
@Mrappbrain
@Pretty
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Very nicely explained, David. The wikiHow forums have certainly been hit by a tidal wave of spam in the past few days. The battle we fight against spammers and vandals is a tireless struggle, with neither side willing to give up. Constant vigilance is the only thing that can help us win. Your point about no feeding spammers is a very good one. Constant posts on all their threads tell them that people are reading, and they are getting attention, be it positive or negative. The fundamental rule of ‘Don’t feed the trolls’ comes into consideration here. I’ll try to combat forum spam to the best of my ability, and am sure the community will, too. I haven’t been notifying Admins immediately though. I first send a warning message, and give the person a chance to reform/ edit his own posts. If he/she doesn’t, I make it a point to post on the Administrator Notice Board under spammers and vandals. I have noticed, though, that most people tend to stop creating new advertising threads when you give them a warning. Is this a sign that they understand that they have made a mistake? I hope so. Why don’t they edit their posts, then? I think they don’t know how to. While it may sound crazy to veteran forum goers, many wikiHowians I know weren’t aware they could edit their posts until informed. Advertising of this sort isn’t unique to the wikiHow forums, though. Every internet forum is targeted by spammers. I’m pretty sure the spammer doesn’t have anything against wikiHow itself, but the opportunity of a website visited very frequently for them to put up a billboard on is too juicy to resist. Most spammers fail to realise that spamming an internet forum isn’t the way to get their products noted, since it only gives them, and their product, a bad name. Regards, Abhishek
I got it. Though it’s unlikely to change their mind and steer them into a real wH editor, since their first intention when they created an account is to advertise, our warning messages may actually make miracle.
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This is a GREAT post. Thanks for the reminder!
