First, this excellent module is not listed here:
http://www.stopforumspam.com/contributions
Second, this module allows for reporting users without any shred of evidence.
See:
http://www.stopforumspam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4468
We find ourselves spending more time dealing with false positives. As of right now, anyone that adds a record to the DB where the user has not spammed *their* forum/blog/wiki (etc), will have their API key removed, all their records removed and their forum account banned.
Someone having their email address in the DB, is not evidence of spamming on your forum. Do not add it. If in doubt, do not add it.
We will be implementing a zero tolerance policy, effective now.
According to the above, the option in /admin/settings/spambot to "Report blocked user registrations as spammers " should be removed altogether.
Also, in user/%user/spambot, the option "Report this account to www.stopforumspam.com as a spammer" should be disabled if there is no evidence (e.g. nodes, comments, private messages, etc.) The presence of evidence should be required just like the presence of IPs. The module shouldn't permit reporting users as spammers without any evidence.
This issue can be considered a critical bug as per stopforumspam.com's policies, highlighted above.
Comment | File | Size | Author |
---|---|---|---|
#9 | 1817292-spambot-9.patch | 1.19 KB | hansfn |
Comments
Comment #1
jennifer.chang CreditAttribution: jennifer.chang commentedWhat I mean is that, as a rule, the evidence should be submitted at the same time as the user is being reported as a spammer.
Comment #2
jennifer.chang CreditAttribution: jennifer.chang commentedhttp://www.stopforumspam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4562
Comment #3
bengtan CreditAttribution: bengtan commentedHi jennifer.chang,
Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
I haven't been keeping up with the latest developments on stopforumspam so I wasn't aware of this change in policy.
I'll have a look into changing the behaviour of spambot.module to match when I have time, but in the meantime, as a workaround, users can simply not tick the box which enables automatic reporting.
> Also, in user/%user/spambot, the option "Report this account to www.stopforumspam.com as a spammer" should be disabled
Since this is a manual option, I'll leave this in, and rely on the user to decide whether there is evidence. It would be too tricky for the module to determine what constitutes evidence since it usually requires human judgement.
Thank you.
Comment #4
bengtan CreditAttribution: bengtan commentedChange title to make this issue more visible.
Comment #5
jennifer.chang CreditAttribution: jennifer.chang commentedThanks for the quick response. I am very grateful both for this module and for the service provided by stopforumspam. Using this module is already restoring my sanity! :)
Yes, I've already changed the settings in my sites and changed my own behaviour, not reporting spammers where not appropriate.
> Also, in user/%user/spambot, the option "Report this account to www.stopforumspam.com as a spammer" should be disabled
What I mean is that the option can be disabled if there are 0 nodes and 0 comments by this user. In such situations, by definition, there is no evidence to submit. The node and comment count is already provided, so it should be trivial to disable the option. If there are nodes and comments, then, obviously, human intervention should be required to make the difference between spam and non-spam.
Anyway, since apparently evidence will be required some day (soon?), we'd need a list of nodes or comments to submit as evidence, just like we have a list of IPs that we can report. The current stopforumspam api apparently already support submitting evidence, although it's not yet mandatory.
Comment #6
bengtan CreditAttribution: bengtan commentedThis issue has been addressed in spambot.module 6.x-3.3 and 7.x-1.2.
Comment #7
jennifer.chang CreditAttribution: jennifer.chang commentedThank you very much for the update.
:)
Comment #9
hansfn CreditAttribution: hansfn commentedI'm sorry to reopen this, but I think the "no evidence" situation still can be improved.
The first time I used this module, I was trying to report some spammers after I cleaned up their spammy comments. I just didn't understand that there should be a list of nodes/comments to select from below "Report this account to www.stopforumspam.com".
The attached patch makes this much clearer. (Tested on my own site of course.)
Comment #10
bengtan CreditAttribution: bengtan commentedHi,
Thanks for the suggestion. I haven't merged your patch per se, but I've taken the ideas and made similar changes.
Commits:
http://drupalcode.org/project/spambot.git/commitdiff/6fa3e97
http://drupalcode.org/project/spambot.git/commitdiff/9f1f886
These will be incorporated into the next spambot release, whenever that is ... or you can patch your own site using the commits listed above.
Thank you.
Comment #11
hansfn CreditAttribution: hansfn commentedThx. Your fix is better since it also fixes the API key message.