Spam and registrations

[Silvan]

I've been getting a few spam registrations that seem to bypass my sonnb's spam filter and a captcha. I presume they might actually be human spammers.

I've enabled 'approvals by moderator' but it stops people from immediately posting.

I was wondering, is there a way for new members to start posting immediately, but their posts only appear once they have been approved? In other words, if they post spam, it won't be seen by the approved members, and they won't get a notification, should they be watching the thread.

 

[Martok]

Yes, use the Follow moderation rules permission which will let you moderate their posts. You could then set up a promotion so that after say 5 or 10 posts they are promoted to a group that doesn't require moderating.

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

I've been getting a few spam registrations that seem to bypass my sonnb's spam filter and a captcha. I presume they might actually be human spammers.

I've enabled 'approvals by moderator' but it stops people from immediately posting.

I was wondering, is there a way for new members to start posting immediately, but their posts only appear once they have been approved? In other words, if they post spam, it won't be seen by the approved members, and they won't get a notification, should they be watching the thread.

There is, it is a little involved though. You have a permission called "Follow moderator rules"


1) You need to remove that permission to your registered group. That will make all users moderated.

Now, you don't want to moderate every single post in the forum (I assume), so you need to move all your existing users to an actual approved group, for that.

2) Create a new group called "Validated Users" or "Approved Users", and give them the Follow message moderation rules permission.

3) Mass update all your users to add Validated Users as a secondary group

........

If you do that, what will happen is that existing users would not be moderated (they are in the Validated group), but any new user will just have Registered, and all their posts will be moderated

You can then set a promotion rule, that says that any user with 1 post gets added to the "Validated Users" group. After all, the user won't be able to post unless you manually approve their first post, and if you approve that, then you are green flagging them to be Validated. Or you can manually add the users to the Validated Group, though that will get tiring really soon most likely.

 

[Paul B]

I specifically put that example in the manual: http://xenforo.com/help/user-group-promotions/

 

[Silvan]

There is, it is a little involved though. You have a permission called "Follow moderator rules"
View attachment 57122

3) Mass update all your users to add Validated Users as a secondary group

Thanks for all that info. I'm nearly there. Except for step 3. How do I mass update all my users to the Validated Users group (and does it have to be as 'secondary group', or can it be the main group?) - do I need a new add-on for that?

 

[Rigel Kentaurus]

Thanks for all that info. I'm nearly there. Except for step 3. How do I mass update all my users to the Validated Users group (and does it have to be as 'secondary group', or can it be the main group?) - do I need a new add-on for that?

There is a batch update users built-in XenForo 1.2



I would not recommend it to be primary

 

[Silvan]

I specifically put that example in the manual: http://xenforo.com/help/user-group-promotions/

I've managed to set up a promotion rule, and in the admin panel my test user has been upgraded to the 'verified user' group (secondary - primary is still set to unapproved user), but all posts are were still being moderated and the title underneath the name still says 'unapproved'.

When I created more posts and another new thread, it said they were waiting for moderation. But when I logged in as a moderator, those posts aren't showing up at all. Not in the forum itself, or flagged in the top bar.

I tried clearing the site's cache, but that's not doing much...

 

[Silvan]

right, the problem seems to have resolved itself; my test user is now able to post without moderation (something to do with a cron job?) However, within that brief period in between, I managed to create a thread that's invisible to everyone, except for my test user. It's flagged as waiting for moderation, but it doesn't appear in the queue and the administrator doesn't see the thread either, and when using the direct URL it shows a "You do not have permission to view this page or perform this action." message - which shouldn't happen for an administrator, right? Really odd.

 

[Paul B]

Administrators are not moderators.

They must be explicitly made moderators and granted the relevant permissions like any other user.