Suggestion: rate limit thread creation and posting NEW users

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Just an idea to prevent this problem (spam) in the future, a rate limit for posts by new users (autocar just registered within the past hour) to say 2-3 new threads every hour, or so, and say a total of 10 posts in the same timeframe, for the first week someone is a member. As of when I looked at his profile, he was up to 45 posts at 50 minutes of being a member, and all appeared to be new threads.

I don't think you alone set them off, Jono, though they may have chosen to riff on your post. I've added back what conversation I could.


M.

I just thought I'd see if I could speak on this thread... now I'm getting the message:
To prevent SPAM, your computer is specifically being denied access to this page. If you believe this is an error please send an email to alex@wrongplanet.net

The spam message seems to be triggered by some completely random part of the content of a post. I.e. taking a post, and stripping back parts of it until it posts, then putting the same parts you took out into a second post, works.

I just did roughly that, elsewhere. I actually ADDED some text to a post, which stopped it being rejected!

I kind of don't like that idea myself. If I think of alot of questions to ask on WP I post topics. I'd hate to have to wait since lets say I could only post 5 new topics a day. I have behavior questions to ask and think of the question then post the topic. Sure I've made 2-3 in quick succession myself but the topics are different but I have life experiences that make me think "Oh I wonder if other Aspies have done this I'll ask on WP" So when coming home I apply that day's experience to 2-3 different topics at once. I hope this isn't an issue to anyone.

Good point.

Exactly why I said new members. Just like you must be here for 5 days and have 5 legit posts to post links. I figure the limits I mentioned would give someone enough rope to hang themselves, without being TOO distracting to other members. Not a complaint about our mods, but it can take a little while for one to appear, (I think the spam attack lasted about an hour and a half before a mod started correcting it) and this would make their cleanup process quicker, in theory. (I assume they need to manually delete each offending thread, and that there isn't a delete all button/command)

EDIT: Additional portion to proposal, I have seen this on other sites, and this would have at least slowed yesterday's spammer down as well, the site checks a submission (new post or thread) against the previous submission for that perticular user. If they match each other, it denies the second one with an error message. I have run into that myself on other sites, especially when visiting via a poor connection, or one with some packet loss, as sometimes a request will end up being submitted and processed by a site, but other issues prevent the packets from all returning.