In a word........no. Not moderated. Not monitored. Kind of like the neglected step-child. All we can do is report each thread since they are all posted with different user names. These same threads were posted all over many, many GW forums.

Thee Admin staff is off for the weekend. Have pity on what's on their desks after a long weekend!

I bet part of the issue is the crap software this site uses. I don't know what it is, but it's terrible as a user, and I think it is for the admins also. It clearly leaves the gates wide open for spammers so the admins' time is eaten up manually deleting crap, evidenced by what happens the minute they take some time off. They need to switch to a widely used, well written, and well supported package like Vbulletin or IP.board. Even a free forum script like PHPbb or SMF would be better than this.

There is a site administrator/moderator. I've communicated with him/her on more than one occasion. Usually takes a couple days for a spammer barrage to get cleaned up.

Looking at the registration form, it's very clear how this happened. No CAPTCHA at all (that's those things on pretty much EVERY other website where you have to enter the text in a picture). Not even a simple question or math problem. I'm surprised there aren't spam attacks more often.

I'd rather put up with occasional spam than to end up with a forum that is policed to death. This is one of the few places we can speak our minds, name the brands, tell about bad service, etc without interference. To me, that makes this forum more trustworthy than most.

Agreed with Athomesewing. Yes, the software is mostly the original, written in a more innocent period on the 'net. You can do your part by giving one, but only one reply labelling it as spam, so it'll sink fast. An advantage of the clunky old system is that it doesn't develop a closed group among the old timers, telling newbies to read all the old threads before asking a question. Instead, there's interaction with every post, and new takes on old questions like electric vs. gas oven.

Actually, I learned something new recently there. One of the forum members posted that with the latest technology, the old saw about gas being moister and electric being dry is turned on its head! But I don't remember the details, more's the pity. If we had a modern system with classified and nested threads, I wouldn't have read that, and the poster wouldn't have written it.

It's worth putting up with a little spam to have this Tin Lizzy to ride around in. :)

Very fortunate that I don't (or rarely) see spam on most of the forums I watch here. Maybe they don't think there's enough "audience" on them to warrant attention.

My beef though is lack of support. I wrote to them outlining a problem I was having with the site. After no response 2 months later I wrote to them again referring to my first email and outlining the problem again. After a while I got an abrupt reply saying they had replied (it certainly hadn't been to me). They said if they could get certain details from me they could check it out straight away. So I gave them the details they wanted that same day. That was about 3 to 4 months ago and I haven't heard from them since. And the problem persists.

I think the main issue is that these sites are started off by people with a vision and a big interest in seeing things work well. But as time goes by the big operators move in and buy them out. They see the site as a "cash cow". Advertising revenue, tax dodge, whatever, but it's only for financial advantage. And the site keeps going due only to the loyalty of the participants to one another. People like to stick with the familiar (cyber-) faces they're used to. (We'll see if this gets any reaction. I doubt it, but you never know your luck in the big city.)

"An advantage of the clunky old system is that it doesn't develop a closed group among the old timers, telling newbies to read all the old threads before asking a question. Instead, there's interaction with every post, and new takes on old questions like electric vs. gas oven"

Huh? I don't see how upgrading to better software would change that at all. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the way Gardenweb is organized, just the software it uses. I don't see how it's different from other forums using newer software? The only thing I'm aware of that Gardenweb does differently is sticking unanswered threads to the top, which I actually like. But currently, I can't figure out to how to do multiple images and links in a single post. I can't figure out how to put links in the body of my posts instead of in that stupid "link that might be helpful" area. You can't upload attachments that aren't images. You have to wait several minutes to edit your posts otherwise it will tell you your edit failed because you "just posted with the same title"? What? You can't delete your posts (OK, OK a lot of other forums don't let you do that). I can't figure out how to format the text in my posts, even basics like bold, italic, underline. I could go on and on and on about how clunky this forum software is. It's a shame, because there is a LOT of great content here.

You could always invest in your own "happy place" if simply ignoring simpleton spam is such a great challenge.

Just saying . . . . .

html code tags are usable for underlining, italics, color, bold, changing text size, setting off quotes, inline clickable links, placing multiple pictures in a post (although the pictures must be online elsewhere for linking).

Etc.

Be sure to properly close/pair tags so formatting changes don't spill over outside your own post. Pay attention to the preview and edit as necessary before committing the post!

I don't know of any successful popular sites that aren't heavily moderated, no matter how ideal the software is with respect to either user interaction or spambot countermeasures. While I think the software (probably site developed) used at dslreports.com is superior to PHPbb, say, used at Linux Mint forums, both these forums and others use moderators. In many cases they are volunteers who have limited power to chastise behaviour violations and kill spam.

Commercial aspects of this site may limit what standard site software can be used, but as in the other cases, full moderation is necessary to deal with rule violators, whether innocent or deliberate. This needs to be done with moderation (hence the name); heavy-handed control can be counterproductive.

In any case, it is essential that moderators not be directed to suppress negative comments that may conflict with any commercial connections the site itself has. We wouldn't want criticisms of manufacturers to be gated by whether the manufacturers provided ads to this site.

kas

Thanks dadoes. I wish they made it more obvious you could do that!

"You could always invest in your own "happy place" if simply ignoring simpleton spam is such a great challenge."

The spam is under control now but I don't know if you saw it yesterday. Several forums were filled up with spam from different user accounts, filling up pages and pages of the threads and it was burying actual posts. So yes, ignoring it was a bit of a challenge. Is it a big deal? No, it was not a big deal. But it was mildly annoying and easily preventable by even a novice webmaster without having to go manually delete all of it, and it is something that rarely happens on other forums.

"You could always invest in your own 'happy place' if simply ignoring simpleton spam is such a great challenge.
Just saying . . . . ."

As hvtech pointed out above, THS was bombarded with spam yesterday. This is not hyperbole.
As for your snarky suggestion, I frequent many fora on the web, covering a gamut of interests. None of the other boards I visit have as antiquated an interface or lack the filters that this one does.

idiotic spambots and the threads just sit there

==>>>

down near the bottom of the page .. there is a link to CONTACT US ...

copy the URL of the spam ... hit that link.. opt for abuse or violation of rules ... put SPAM in the title ... and paste the URL in the body.. hit send ...

they disappear faster .. when GW is made aware of them ...

it appears.. not like the rest of us.. GW tech support was on holiday this weekend ...

the posts will disappear.. when tech support is made aware of such.. and those on the left coast get to work ...

i dont know if this was posted prior.. as i did not read all the replies ...

ken

tropicbreezent, I've only had great response from GW folks when I've had a problem, so maybe the problem you're having is interfering with the communications? They think they really did answer? Is it something we can help you with?

Gardenweb was started by an individual named Spike in the early days of the web. I don't know the whole story, because it had been bought out by iVillage/NBC way before I joined. There have been some upgrades, most noticeably the ability to edit posts (a very new feature and the ability to upload pictures directly. The only way used to be inserting them with HTML code. You can still insert them with HTML to get multiple photos in one post. Put a space between tags and they'll vertically stacked. Put no spaces between tags and, if they're small enough, they'll be in a horizontal line. Similarly, the interaction between the message translator and HTML puts extra lines between some other kinds of tags, which you can get rid of by not putting spaces between tags. You can use either ancient HTML tags, like "i", or span tags with CSS styles to format your text. You can also put in hyperlink tags in the normal way. Google "HTML italics" or "HTML link tag" and go to one of the "free schools" to get a quick reference for how to do just the one you want to do.

Most simple markup tags work, but don't go trying to redesign the site from inside a message. :) Also, while ampersand codes do mostly work, they get interpreted to the preview screen, which you have to use, so if you're trying to show a tag, it'll be interpreted as HTML in the actual post and not show up. Similarly, I tried with the ligated "oe" in "boeuf bourguignon" and it worked to the preview screen, but failed on the post. Degree symbols work in the codes, though, as do tildes, though I think they work better using numeric codes than English ones.

IF YOU SCREW UP the preview screen can go all haywire and lose its formatting, and if you post it that way you might create other problems, so be very careful with your angle brackets and quote marks if you use HTML.

If you want to post right after a post of yours, you can just add a single letter (or space) to the Subject of Posting, or change the title altogether, and you can do it. Because of the ancient software, people who have slow connections or fast double clicks can accidentally double post. It still happens. The you've already posted screen helps eliminate a lot of it. I haven't had this problem with the edit screen, but if you do, changing the title should fix it.

I've heard that Spike was a very heavy handed moderator. Things ran his way. If members violated egregiously, he sent them to Disneyland. Literally. He redirected their attempts to sign in to Disneyland's site.

GW does respond to complaints about spamming and flaming. The forums here I've participated in have very little of either compared to other open forums I've been to. Concentrated attacks cannot be blamed on the staff. I don't know about the case the other day, but denial of service spam attacks are being launched by criminals, last I heard, mostly in South America, as ways of extorting service providers. Humans get past the security then turn their 'bots loose from there, so simple countermeasures aren't always useful. A denial of service attack is much easier to launch than an actual breach.

The aspect of the clunky old software that I was praising is that it doesn't allow for a large backlog of already answered that question threads, and because the most recent threads are on top, new questions get seen by old hands, and answered newly to the specifics of the case, rather than a lot of links to non-interactive, old content. We post links to old threads when we think they're helpful because we know what's good there, rather than as a scolding maneuver to discourage newbie questions.

BTW, the way the threads work, is that the latest post bumps the threads to the top of the heap. New threads stay at the top until they're replied to, or until time runs out. It may actually be forum volume, rather than an actual timer, though in Kitchens the unanswered threads do seem to start sinking at the same time every day. It takes a lot longer in slower forums. Perhaps it's that if there is enough volume to demand it, they add a timer. Reply once and only once to a spam or semi-spam or equally offensive post (best to say it's what you're doing so others don't add their 2 cents) and it'll sink fast.