New FAQ: How do I deal with spam?

[fiddlingfrog]

This FAQ is meant to tie together all of our spam-related information, currently spread over several different categories. Ideally, I'd like to have a whole set of these quick-intro or chapter-listing style FAQs all grouped under the Quick Answer category, so they appear at the top of the FAQ list. When we have enough of them, FAQs like 286 and

Comments

[slinkslowdown]

Should notaspammer be mentioned somewhere in that last part?

[rebelsheart]

We discussed this in IRC the other day and the answer is no, because we don't want to document how to get around anti-spam measures in an easy-to-find manner.

[fiddlingfrog]

Y'know I just check the Russian FAQs and it is documented in 338.

[slinkslowdown]

But aren't individual accounts looked at before being approved? The majority of spammers use new, empty accounts and those would just be rejected.

[rebelsheart]

I would probably not refer to spam as common. Instead saying something like "LiveJournal is constantly working to improve it's anti-spam processes. As spammers develop new tactics constantly, you may encounter spam on LiveJournal."

Spam comments on your entries
- needs to address "suspicious comments"

Spam e-mail from LiveJournal
- I believe current policy is that this kind of request goes to the APT, who then work with the user to determine if it's us or spoofing.
- sadly, "email" is the expected spelling.

Spam messages in your inbox
- the ability to limit who can send you PMs is discussed in http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=305

[silverflight8]

I hate to do this, but it should be "working to improve its anti-spam processes"

it's = it is, or it was, always always
its = possessive

[rebelsheart]

Quite right. You should at my old reviews and look at my typos :)

[fiddlingfrog]

LiveJournal is constantly working...
Where did you intend for that to go? It doesn't really fit in any of the places I used the word common.

[silverflight8]

(Not sure why the first three sentences are all separate paragraphs? They could be collapsed into one

[fiddlingfrog]

First three sentences? You mean "Controlling spam...", "Spam itself...", and "You can control..."?

I put dealing with in front of protection because I figured people who are taking preventative measures would be more likely to read through the FAQ over people who are dealing with an immediate spam problem.

Dealing with:
* Will add the "suspicious comments" bit.
* The moderation filter doesn't help with spam that already exists, which is what you're dealing with in this section.

Protecting:
* Yeah, limiting who can comment should be added.
* Ooop, forgot to link that. Thanks for catching it.
* Something like "If your comments have been marked as spam, you can contact the journal owner or community owner/maintainers and ask them to mark your comment as not-spam"?
* If you're a user of LiveJournal, e-mail from LJ isn't spam.

[silverflight8]

Yeah, the three sentences that you quoted.

Hm, maybe make a note in the beginning? "This FAQ addresses prevention and dealing with spam" (and I think the h1/2 headers should have anchors? If so, you can linkify "prevention" and "dealing", which will also highlight them for the viewer).

Oh, true about the dealing with and communities. Maybe move that to preventing?

Yeah, the quoted sentence sounds for not-spam.

Then I think you need to clarify. "If you are not a user of LiveJournal and are receiving emails from LJ, please first check that you do not have an LJ account from previously. The FAQ here [faq17] has information on how to find out if there are LJ accounts linked with your email address; if they are, you can delete the accounts, which will stop those emails. However, if you do not have an account and are still receiving emails please report the email addresses to LiveJournal Support" then go into the 'block lj from your email provider'.
(wording is odd for my version, go ahead and fix!)

[fiddlingfrog]

It's actually two paragraphs. First one is "this is what spam is" and second is "Here's what you can do about it".

It's probably best not to think of this as a FAQ. Instead, think of it like an index. There shouldn't be any new information here, and all the sections are really "Here's some brief information and a link to the full FAQ where you can read more. (And internal headings are H3, sometimes even H4. The FAQ title is H2.)

FAQ 157 is already in protecting communities.

Information on dealing with existing e-mails, either from LJ legitimately, illegitimately appearing to come from LJ, or just linking to LJ, should go in the "dealing with e-mail" section. I'm just still at a loss for how to write it.

[markf]

I'd change the wording a bit on the intro. Here's what I threw together:

"Spam comes in a variety of ways, and how it is delivered constantly changes. Marking comments, entries, and messages as spam instead of just deleting them helps LiveJournal to identify and remove spammers."

Spam comments on your entries
1st paragraph, I'd remove the last sentence and put it in the next section about communities.

2nd paragraph, 2nd sentence there's a typo. " these suspicious comments you have to option" to -> the

Spam entries in your communities

I'd change this title to "Spam in communities"

First sentence: "Spam entries to communities are also typical." -> "Spam in communities can come in the form of entries or comments."
2nd sentence: " may be the best way to" -> "can help"

Spam email from or about LiveJournal I'd remove "Spam" from the title as it implies LJ sends out unsolicited spam