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u/Kylde Aug 09 '10
hmmm.nice piece of work :) I'll also mention that the username is often a clue, as spammers aren't very bright as a rule. softmin88 (deleted) is a classic example, he keeps returning as xxxx88, yyyy88 and so on. Also I'm instantly suspicious of anyone who relies heavily on URL-shorteners (like the infamous ansblog). Similarly, domain-names can be enlightening, "breaking", "trends" and over-use of Z in a URL, for example. That's when instinct comes into it I guess. The big giveaway to me for the likes of toydots.com/officexyz.com, who are VERY professional, is overly verbose article headers, in stilted English, like this
8: I'd hesitate to remove him as he has made so few posts, gut-feeling says I'd agree with you but I'd bookmark them and track their next few submissions
14: the CONTENT looks good ... 50/50
16: something you fail to mention is to glance at the submission URLS, all of those sites are keyword-stuffers for SEO purposes, the URLS alone would have me reaching for the "remove" button
18: topics alone would make me ban this 1
12: but their CONTENT looks fresh, another 1 I'd monitor for a while longer
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Aug 10 '10
Kylde,
As the reigning ruler of r/reportthespammers, I have a rather odd question for you.
I linked to a profile the other day that was a dead 10/10 knockout spammer, and I wasn't permitted to submit the link. The reason was that you had already submitted it about a month ago, yet nothign had been done about it.
Not trying to make a big deal out of a small situation, I was just wondering how much sway you had over there and what we could do about valentinarossi
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u/Kylde Aug 10 '10
done There's a trick to it .. add a "?" to the end of the user-profile's URL and then any gibberish after that. Reddit treats it as a NEW URL but ignores anything after the "?". Like this:
http://www.reddit.com/user/Kylde/?allthiswillbeignoredbutthelinkisstillvalid
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u/luster Aug 10 '10
Kylde, you know the RTS mods can smell spam and don't need "no stinking tips" from VA. :-)
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u/syuk Aug 09 '10
There are people setting up accounts and just drip feeding comment on all social networks, to set provenance and see trends. These are teh 'spammers' now. I would like to see what percentage of posts are reported, I do my bit and it seems quite high.
Great post, I never saw this until I looked at qgyh2 tl;dr, needs to be seen by more.
edit: I mean establishing 'legends' for themselves to use.
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Aug 09 '10
I've got a question... What if, for example 14, all the single-source posts are actually good posts, that have interesting original content. (Not that user/content in particular, just that type of example.) (If this is already a no, let's imagine that the content is as simple as pictures, so images are being linked to directly, but all hosted on the same source.)
Would this be acceptable? If not, then why leave all the posts that did go through the spam filter, shouldn't we just remove all the posts we can and/or submit him to r/reportthespammers?
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u/ilovecomputers Aug 09 '10
Well, good to know I've been doing it right :)
Of course being around the pimp daddy strikes up an example from the Jacobellis v. Ohio obscenity case: "I know it when I see it." Hopefully this post will give new mods a taste of what to look out for.
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Aug 09 '10
Hello, violentacrez.
Excellent guide!
I admire your link and comment karma. If you could spend it, what would you buy?
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Aug 10 '10
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Aug 10 '10
I heard a joke the other day and thought of you (when reddit encroaches on afk thoughts, something's wrong, but regardless):
What's the best thing about having sex with a transexual?
When you reach around it feels like it's gone all the way through.
Good list by the way. We have one great spammer at r/design that keeps emailing us when his links are removed asking us why they're blocked, despite us explaining every time. I almost feel sorry for him.
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u/istara Aug 10 '10
Their youtube username is the same as their reddit username
So's mine. And the guy mentioned - GAndriev - looks like a real name.
I'm not suggesting the spamming verdict is incorrect, but not on the username argument.
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u/anutensil Aug 15 '10
Just read through this and it is, without a doubt, a great help. Thanks for taking the time to make this muddy area clearer.
Because you place so much emphasis on verified email, I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that I can't get my email verified for reasons no one, including ketralnis, has been able to explain. Hence, I do not have verified email. I can't possibly be the only redditor who is experiencing this problem.
Again, thanks for the time you put into tackling the problem of identifying spammers. I learned a lot.
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u/kloo2yoo Aug 09 '10
I recently had a blogspammer that was subbing excellent content, but it was copypasted from other sources. I asked him to blurb-and-link but it looks like he's decided to quit instead. Disappointing, because it was really good content.
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u/mayonesa Aug 09 '10
This should be required reading for moderators across the internet. Pattern-matching trumps linear rulesets.
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u/anirdnas Aug 09 '10
I am not a moderator lol, but why don't you also use in detecting spammers the fact if this people vote on other submissions or on other people's comments?
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u/S2S2S2S2S2 Aug 09 '10
You know, va, I decided the other day that you're the Hannibal Lecter of reddit. You have trolled in the past, yet you are always refined and intelligent. You understand the mind of the troll and spammer and budding "agents" would do well to pick your brain to hunt down other trolls and spammers as long as they don't get caught in your reverse-meta-troll web of deceit, ending with you eating their account's corpse. :)