Spammers' #1 objective is to post links. Therefore, posting links should be permissions-based.

XFuser

Active member
The #1 objective of spammers is to register on a Forum so that they can post a link.

Therefore, logic would dictate that posting a link should be a privilege granted by a specific Usergroup Permission.

This would allow Admins to only grant this permission to users who have demonstrated their commitment to the Forum (e.g. has posted at least X times, or received at least Y likes, trophies, etc.).

Currently, there is no way to keep new users from posting links unless all new posts from new users are moderated, which is overkill.

Any user wanting to post a link immediately is most likely a spammer, so this would easily fix that problem.

Thank you.
 
Upvote 36
I think this is a good suggestion. I'd rather want it to be like this: Anyone who's got less than X number of posts and has posted link should be immediately put into moderation queue. There are genuine users who may post useful link. We don't want to discourage them.
 
I also think this is a good idea however spammers would just end up posting links like XenForo dot com or what have you to go around those permissions.
 
It's not exactly like having a privilege, but I just put [url* into my "banned words" in the spam management settings, and set that to put items into the moderation queue. Since I only scan the first X posts of a user, they will automatically "graduate" to a non-moderated state after that number of posts.
 
A good suggestion, and one that I have a use for immediately - could anyone recommend and add-on that would allow me to stop a usergroup from posting links?

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
You can just set a spam key of http://www. Or something similar to be checked for those first 5 posts and then moderate them. Be aware if you are running XF 1.4+ most of your spam is from humans. Whatever you do they can learn really quickly. If you can afford to block a couple isps in Pakistan a couple more in India and then basically every major vps provider you can get rid of most of the spam with the plugin from TPU.
 
Restricting users from posting internal links is not a good idea.
This suggestion is good when it comes to restricting external links.
 
You can just set a spam key of http://www. Or something similar to be checked for those first 5 posts and then moderate them. Be aware if you are running XF 1.4+ most of your spam is from humans. Whatever you do they can learn really quickly. If you can afford to block a couple isps in Pakistan a couple more in India and then basically every major vps provider you can get rid of most of the spam with the plugin from TPU.
This is highly recommended and we do something similar here at XF.com (Spam Phrases).

Anyone posting links gets sent to the moderation queue up to their first X posts. As it makes use of the moderation queue, it's not the end of the world if someone genuine gets filtered out (e.g. posting an internal link) that said, you could probably write a regex that only targeted links that didn't include your own domain.
 
Thanks, but I already have that in place for new members. I want to be able to selectively stop individuals from posting links by putting them in a "No Links" usergroup.

Does anyone know if there is an add-on that adds a permission to enable/disable link posting?

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
This is really needed, really i believe this should be part of the core software.

My reasoning for having this added would be
Well we have a dedicated promotion section on my site which requires users to reach a certain rank before they can promote their youtube channels, by not allowing newly registered users not to post links, i believe we would have better content and discourage those members who are just here for free advertising
 
This is highly recommended and we do something similar here at XF.com (Spam Phrases).

Anyone posting links gets sent to the moderation queue up to their first X posts. As it makes use of the moderation queue, it's not the end of the world if someone genuine gets filtered out (e.g. posting an internal link) that said, you could probably write a regex that only targeted links that didn't include your own domain.

It works great on the forum, but in Private conversations it's a annoying limitation for my new members (they always complain about it) They want to discuss in private and can't send links. Because the conversation is private there are no public links (less interesting for spammers)
In Private conversations I probably limit 50% of my users while I maybe have 0.5% that tries to send spam via PC.

I hope to find a solution for this, but removing the spam key is not an option because the forum will be spammed in no time.
 
The #1 objective of spammers is to register on a Forum so that they can post a link.
I've seen a bunch of non-English spam which doesn't actually post any links, just IM client references an a bunch of advert text.

You can just set a spam key of http://www.
This doesn't block media sites, which I've seen from a couple of recent human spammers who slip through the ISP-level bans.

But blocking links (and media) would be quite useful.
 
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