I thought this might interest one or two people. There are A LOT of things that go on behind the scenes here that only Lawrence, Jason, and Ben see, and a few more things that only I see.
Here's one example of a forum spammer from last night / early this morning.
A year-old thread got bumped, and the spammer thought she was being clever by actually participating in the real discussion. However, her signature had links for Viagra and Levitra.
Lawrence caught it, and deleted it. That makes it disappear for normal forum members, but mods and I can still see it highlighted in pink as shown below.
The thread she posted in was about eating healthy foods -
http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/healthy-foods-you-eat?
You'll also notice that I can see the ip address, which is from India, where a lot of spam originates. (They speak good English, are educated, and work for the equivalent of minimum wage if you need spammers.)
I delete the user account, and then block the ip address as shown below, using the .htaccess file on the server. This will give that person a blank white page when they try to access the site.
On average, I spend about 1 - 2 hours a day during the week, and perhaps an hour over the weekend dealing with administrative duties. I think it's probably the same for the moderators.
I normally have 2 - 4 emails each day from the guys. Usually they are informing me of stuff they have already taken care of. They usually snag several spammers each week before 99% of you guys even realize it.
There is the occasional policy question I have to rule on, but for the most part, the forums are kept clean, safe, and fun by Lawrence, Jason, and Ben - all nearly invisibly accomplished.
In the administrative backend for the rest of the site outside of the forums, we get about 10 spam comments every single day. The system catches them before they get published, and I delete them.
Here's the first 4 from this morning -
There's also server back-ups, redundant hard drives, load balancing, and most importantly, LOTS OF PIPE SMOKING!
I nominate this post for the most boring one ever.
Here's one example of a forum spammer from last night / early this morning.
A year-old thread got bumped, and the spammer thought she was being clever by actually participating in the real discussion. However, her signature had links for Viagra and Levitra.
Lawrence caught it, and deleted it. That makes it disappear for normal forum members, but mods and I can still see it highlighted in pink as shown below.
The thread she posted in was about eating healthy foods -
http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/healthy-foods-you-eat?
You'll also notice that I can see the ip address, which is from India, where a lot of spam originates. (They speak good English, are educated, and work for the equivalent of minimum wage if you need spammers.)
I delete the user account, and then block the ip address as shown below, using the .htaccess file on the server. This will give that person a blank white page when they try to access the site.
On average, I spend about 1 - 2 hours a day during the week, and perhaps an hour over the weekend dealing with administrative duties. I think it's probably the same for the moderators.
I normally have 2 - 4 emails each day from the guys. Usually they are informing me of stuff they have already taken care of. They usually snag several spammers each week before 99% of you guys even realize it.
There is the occasional policy question I have to rule on, but for the most part, the forums are kept clean, safe, and fun by Lawrence, Jason, and Ben - all nearly invisibly accomplished.
In the administrative backend for the rest of the site outside of the forums, we get about 10 spam comments every single day. The system catches them before they get published, and I delete them.
Here's the first 4 from this morning -
There's also server back-ups, redundant hard drives, load balancing, and most importantly, LOTS OF PIPE SMOKING!
I nominate this post for the most boring one ever.
:
L. :D