Ban usless people who post the same crap to every Paid Drupal services topic

A big +1 - these types of repeated posts to every paid services post clutters the forum & makes everyone look bad.

Amen... There is no way they are qualified for *every* job posted, not that they actually read them ( http://drupal.org/node/304360). It's a complete waste of resources and allows for potential gaming of Google PR. Paid Drupal Service forum rules should mandate personal contact for response to offers IMO.

I think we should do 2 things:

1) Switch off posting comments for all topics in that forum

2) require that a poster have his contact tab turned on on the time of posting and automatically add a paragraph explaining tht interested parties should use that..

+1 for #3 and I'd also like to suggest adding some text to the form when posting to be careful on who they hire. I believe there's a handbook page with suggestions somewhere... Would need to find that and may could link to that.

Michelle

I contacted Drupal.services and asked them add their real name. If they don't add their real name in 48 hours I'll block their account and we can uppublish all their comments.

I'll do the same for smartpixel design. I think it's fine to have a discussion about jobs in the forums, but this kind of non-stop posting is annoying. Easy enough to block those people.

Kieran

I think it is a bad idea to waste the time of some of our valued contributors trying to police a forum that is just as bad as the hosting forum.

I had a nice dialogue via email with Anil aka. drupal.services. He has added his name to his profile and understands to use the contact form to advertise his services, or to respond appropriately in the forum topic.

It is a bad idea to prevent thousands of new Drupal users from being able to find help because one or two people are not following the norms in the forum. It only takes a few seconds to block a user. I would rather that we aggressively block users with questionable behavior then make it even more difficult than it already is to for users to find help with their Drupal site.

Kieran

I see the benefits & drawbacks of both #3 and #7. I think it's worthwhile to police the forum, as it makes it seem more legit when there's actual dialogue between clients & providers, rather than just copy & paste jobs repeatedly for every post.

May I suggest http://drupal.org/user/95644 be considered for a warning as well?

In a shocking turn of events, neither of the people who were warned, really got the message. Oh well, now they have nice new user names.

http://drupal.org/user/173102
http://drupal.org/user/163954

I've contacted http://drupal.org/user/95644 and issued a warning.

Kieran

And contacted this one: http://drupal.org/user/302690

Yeah this is starting to get bad. I love the response to services.drupal by Michelle in http://drupal.org/node/306084! I think http://drupal.org/user/188024 needs to be warned as well.

I've blocked smartpixeldesigns new account http://drupal.org/user/356195 for continued posting.

I've also blocked Eshilon Design Inc for http://drupal.org/node/306071#comment-1004169.

I've contacted: http://drupal.org/user/136498, and Gloscon has been warned.

I've updated smartpixel's adci username: blocked for spamming adci

I've emailed Chris Winn at Eshilon Design to figure out what's going on.

Contacted http://drupal.org/user/188024 for a warning.

Yes, I have received note from Kieran. Will use contact form in future.

RE: #3, the only thing I worry about is that it would just turn forum spam into contact/email spam.

I've asked Heine to look at my conversation with Chris Winn. I've just had a nice phone call with Roshan Shaw from Gloscon and he was very helpful and assured me his team would adapt to the new norms in the paid services forum.

Cheers,
Kieran

I had a nice email conversation with Chris Winn at Eshilon Design and he didn't receive the warning email I sent him. I can't find it either, and I pretty good at ensuring I get CC'd. Heine's reviewed the thread and agreed that we should unblock his account.

Kieran

Blocked "smart"pixel's new account: http://drupal.org/user/364815 . Can we just block his IP?

Michelle

When you block people please also 1) rename them to denote why they are blocked 2) remove their URL from the "personal information" profile page.

Otherwise these accounts still provide value to the spammers in the form of linkjuice :(

I understand the renaming, but blocked accounts aren't providing any linkjuice... Unless you make Googlebot a site maintainer. ;)

Michelle

Ack, I actually prefer people to not change anything on blocked accounts. If you don't remove their posts, then I guess changing the name is helpful.

Ah, silly me - thanks Michelle.

Also, this is "fixed." afaict

I normally delete spam posts outright. In this case, I just unpublished them because this user has a history of making new accounts and this way there was a record.

Not sure if it's really "fixed". We still have a problem with this user creating new accounts over and over. Not sure what to do about him.

Michelle

Alexander Kuznetsov, http://drupal.org/user/364815 is on his fourth account in four days.

Our friend Anil is back with a clever new email. drupaljob. I've contacted him to see if it's the same as the previously clever and original drupalservices.

Anyway, takes a couple of minutes to block these folks and unpublish their new accounts.

I've also given, http://drupal.org/user/136498 his final warning.

I'd like to leave this as not fixed until we've eliminated at least the major offenders. There's dozens of people who do good work who've given up on paid-services due to these prolific spammers. If we stay diligent, then I think the good posters will come back and we will have a strong community to self police the spammers.

Kieran

Since amazon agrees, changing the status back.

Michelle

New spammer - dug up a ton of posts from the last few weeks: http://drupal.org/user/342618 - just look at the front page of the paid services forum for the same post 10 times or so.

I looked at the tracker of http://drupal.org/user/342618 and every post was exactly the same, so have blocked their account. Now the guidelines are up at the top of that forum, I think we should just aggressively ban every user who does this, and deal with them individually if they decide it's worth getting in touch.

Wish I'd seen this issue earlier, thanks all.

I'm also borderline on Eileenpound http://drupal.org/user/261154/track - only some are cut and paste, although to be fair it also spans a long time frame, but will keep an eye out.

catch - yes http://drupal.org/node/256962 looks very suspect to me. I'm pretty sure eileen and valerie are the same person and doubt that there was really ever any site to be developed.

Blocked http://drupal.org/user/342618, username: nagaraju12us

Blocked this user too: http://drupal.org/user/360382

Now that I look at the issue again, and read the title, it's probably time to close this issue and create one a little more professional.

These have all been reactivated after they agreed to follow the new guidelines.

http://drupal.org/user/173102
http://drupal.org/user/163954
http://drupal.org/user/95644

Kieran