Check off "Moderated membership", as well as one of the two options for Community Moderation (preferably the one involving whitelisted links-- that'll allow text-only posts to go through unscathed). Also make sure that "All members" is checked-- then remove any Russian spammers who do make it through the cracks.
I'd also be willing to be a co-moderator; it's far easier for me to spot Russian spammers trying to apply to the comm than trying to make sure the letters in a CAPTCHA are in the right order.
At first glance, I felt that moderated membership would do more to stifle community growth than actually solve the problem of spam. I'd like to keep this community as open as possible and was not confident that I'd be available to reply and investigate membership requests in a timely fashion.
Most people who want to join a community expect instant responses. If made to wait even a few hours on the internet, some folks lose confidence in the site or the moderator or the community.
Let me put some more thought into this and take a closer look at how this could work. perhaps I could set up some kind of moderation committee within the community who could do the job of "investigate and approve applicants".
I appreciate you telling me about the problems with the captchas. It seems like that should be a no-brainer in this sort of community. Sorry about that.
I just noticed when I submitted my last reply that the captchas have an audio challenge alternative way to authenticate exactly for accessibility reasons. I'm curious: have you tried the audio challenge? That seems to be there exactly for this sort of accessibility situation.
If it's just one or two people doing it, banning the troublemakers seems to be more effective than doing something that affects everyone who's trying to use the comm normally. If I were a frequent poster, I'd find having to do this EVERY SINGLE TIME I wanted to make a comment so many times more annoying than a spam post once every few days that it's not even funny. You yourself said you had to find the spam and ask for links to it to zap it... if it's so infrequent that finding incidences of it is harder than avoiding it, then I don't think you have a problem so dire that the way the forum works must be changed in a way that makes it harder for everyone.
The spam was the tiny inconvenience; this is the ever-present obstacle that makes the community harder to use and enjoy. I hope you'll reconsider this use of a tank to kill a mosquito.
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http://www.livejournal.com/community/manage.bml
Click "settings" next to synaesthesis.
Check off "Moderated membership", as well as one of the two options for Community Moderation (preferably the one involving whitelisted links-- that'll allow text-only posts to go through unscathed). Also make sure that "All members" is checked-- then remove any Russian spammers who do make it through the cracks.
I'd also be willing to be a co-moderator; it's far easier for me to spot Russian spammers trying to apply to the comm than trying to make sure the letters in a CAPTCHA are in the right order.
Reply
At first glance, I felt that moderated membership would do more to stifle community growth than actually solve the problem of spam. I'd like to keep this community as open as possible and was not confident that I'd be available to reply and investigate membership requests in a timely fashion.
Most people who want to join a community expect instant responses. If made to wait even a few hours on the internet, some folks lose confidence in the site or the moderator or the community.
Let me put some more thought into this and take a closer look at how this could work. perhaps I could set up some kind of moderation committee within the community who could do the job of "investigate and approve applicants".
I appreciate you telling me about the problems with the captchas. It seems like that should be a no-brainer in this sort of community. Sorry about that.
Reply
I just noticed when I submitted my last reply that the captchas have an audio challenge alternative way to authenticate exactly for accessibility reasons. I'm curious: have you tried the audio challenge? That seems to be there exactly for this sort of accessibility situation.
Reply
The spam was the tiny inconvenience; this is the ever-present obstacle that makes the community harder to use and enjoy. I hope you'll reconsider this use of a tank to kill a mosquito.
Reply
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