our approval queue is big!

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#1
At the time of typing, I (as a member of staff) can see that there are 588 potential members (or spammers) in our approval queue. And have no idea what to do about them. :/

/sarcasm ON
The lazy way of "solving" this problem is to reject all of them and pretend they do not exist. ... We might as well dig our heads in to the sand and pretend the world is perfect.
/sarcasm OFF

As far as I know, the only way to approve anyone is for one of staff to select an action (approve/reject/reject-with-reason) on the potential member and click a save button.

I wish there were a better approach. This post is part-rant and part-plea-for-help. Our existing approach is "do nothing" .

-chronodekar
 

da_fox2279

California Crackpot
#3
That's not a bad idea, actually. Give some members the power to add new members, with the understanding that they must also be responsible for removing them if they turn out to be spammers. For other offenses, let the Senior Admins handle them on a case by case basis.
 

Oni_Rinku

Knower of Stuff
#4
That's not a bad idea, actually. Give some members the power to add new members, with the understanding that they must also be responsible for removing them if they turn out to be spammers. For other offenses, let the Senior Admins handle them on a case by case basis.
If the Admins do create a new "sub-mod" I'd volunteer to help.
 

da_fox2279

California Crackpot
#6
Thirded.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#7
Have you considered just approving them 20-50 at a time, wait a week, then approve another batch? Weed out any potential spammers in between in little chunks as opposed to all at once.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#8
We could also approve exactly 75 members, so that we can crack 20k total...
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#9
If I understand the workings of the queue correctly, it does not *blindly* dump everyone who registers into the queue. Something about the new-registerant triggered our spam-filter to put them there.

Granted, it could be a false-positive, but after experiencing the need to clean up spammers on the forum, I'm not inclined to just approve everyone caught by the filter. Which brings us to the question of what criteria is used? Speaking for myself (and not the staff as a whole!) ... its random. And I have this impression that during the moments when I do approve many folks, I"ll be dealing with spam reports over the next week or so.

At the moment, there are 1004 users in the queue.

-chronodekar
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#10
Yeah, that's why I asked if we couldn't just approve them a few tens at a time. I notice the total user count hasn't gone up at all in over a month. I assume the filter seems to be catching everyone now (that, or every last one of those 1004 users is a spambot?)
 

AoMythology

Apparently a report-er
#11

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#12
Why the complete and actual fuck has it been allowed to build up to over a THOUSAND FUCKING REGISTRATIONS?!
 

AoMythology

Apparently a report-er
#13
Why the complete and actual fuck has it been allowed to build up to over a THOUSAND FUCKING REGISTRATIONS?!
While I would have put it in fewer CAPS, I can't help but agree....
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#14
Why the complete and actual fuck has it been allowed to build up to over a THOUSAND FUCKING REGISTRATIONS?!
The updated count is 1028 now... :crying-in-a-corner:

I disagree with you on this. More advertising is good to have. I would encourage more folks coming here! Just wish our spam filter stopped flagging them ...

-chronodekar
 

AoMythology

Apparently a report-er
#15
The updated count is 1028 now... :crying-in-a-corner:



I disagree with you on this. More advertising is good to have. I would encourage more folks coming here! Just wish our spam filter stopped flagging them ...

-chronodekar
Yeah, joking about the 'fault' part. I agree that it's better for more members to come join. Hopefully they won't lose interest after waiting weeks to be approved.... (Hint-hint! :D)
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#16
The last registered user registered on October 18th. Are you sure that spam filter is catching 100% bots?
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#17
@chronodekar plz

won't somebody think of the catgirls?!
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#18
Is this seriously still not fixed? Don't Hawks us, mods, actually do the job you signed up for >_>
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#19
Is this seriously still not fixed? Don't Hawks us, mods, actually do the job you signed up for >_>
For the record, I signed up expecting only the occasional spam-deletion or minor clean up. To approve ~1421 users manually? That's waaay too much work - I tried to do a bit of it some months ago, but I really can't keep doing it - too much of a time sink.

I wish some of the other staff would chime in this thread. I am aware some discussion has happened on Discord, but I'm not on-top of it and a lot of chat just flies by me. It's worse when someone tags me on Discord - if I'm busy, I won't really get the chance to look it up until hours (or even a day/two) later, by which the discussion would be lost.

-chronodekar
 

AoMythology

Apparently a report-er
#20
For the record, I signed up expecting only the occasional spam-deletion or minor clean up. To approve ~1421 users manually? That's waaay too much work - I tried to do a bit of it some months ago, but I really can't keep doing it - too much of a time sink.

I wish some of the other staff would chime in this thread. I am aware some discussion has happened on Discord, but I'm not on-top of it and a lot of chat just flies by me. It's worse when someone tags me on Discord - if I'm busy, I won't really get the chance to look it up until hours (or even a day/two) later, by which the discussion would be lost.

-chronodekar
Why not ask Xon (the maker of Xenforo) if there's a tool to make the approval process more automatic?
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#21
Why not ask Xon (the maker of Xenforo) if there's a tool to make the approval process more automatic?
That ... is a good suggestion! If we could grant non-Admin folks permission to approve/disapprove new members, it would take the load off the current staff. I do not know Xon directly to ask, but it will be worth checking for plugins or something similar which could do the job.

-chronodekar
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#22
:( Can't find anything to clear out the approval queue - besides extreme actions. To be honest, I'm tempted to just reject the entire lot - many of them have likely been sitting around for months ...

The best alternative I can find is this = https://xenforo.com/community/resources/moderate-new-members.7108/

That is an addon which "Moderates new member posts until minimum number of posts has been manually approved" . What this might do is limit the damage a spambot can have on the forum - at worst they'll be able to make a single post/thread which needs to be manually approved. On the flip side, it means more work for the staff - *someone* will need be around approving/rejecting the first post/thread new members make.

I am *NOT* volunteering for the job of approving/rejecting new member posts for potential spammers.

However, if Wata/Ero say the tool would be useful, I'm willing to help obtain and install the add-on on our forum. To be fair, I'm not expecting either to say "yes". On one old incarnation of a forum I was on (not sure if this was TFF or not), we had an 18+ section which required manual approval for folks to see stuff - *that* was too much trouble for staff to deal with. To basically expand that task for *every* new member? -sigh- ... It's just a lot of work and not much fun.

:head-scratching: ... I'm coming to the conclusion that we need more staff willing to help deal with new registrations. We have a few volunteers in this thread, but it's not my call to make.

-chronodekar
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#23
You guys are looking for a shotgun solution when none is needed. These 1400 didn't appear in a day, it's been over the course of months and months. Whittle them down and more importantly, STAY ON TOP OF IT. It doesn't need to happen all at once, it just needs to not build up, you know?
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#24
... Whittle them down and more importantly, STAY ON TOP OF IT. It doesn't need to happen all at once, it just needs to not build up, you know?
This I contest.

Yes - the current (as of typing) 1437, did not occur in a single day. But you know what did happen in a single day? (or at least between me logging off and onto the forum months ago) About ~200+ new members who could be spammers.

If the count is just ~5 each week or at worst, 20, I could slowly whittle it down. The problem is that "spam" flagged registrations have out-paced our (ok, at least, my personal - I can't speak for the rest) capacity to keep up.

My biggest reason for not touching the queue *right now* is because, even if I dedicate 30 mins every week for this task, I'm unlikely to whittle it down. Ever.

-chronodekar
 

Shirotsume

Not The Goddamn @dmin
#25
*deep breath*

It's been 136 days, or about 4 and a half months, since this thread was opened, with 849 new approvals in that time.

That's six approvals a day. Across 5 staff. Because you aren't the only staff member, chrono. Even if you alternate weeks so you only do approvals every other week (thereby taking into account that sometimes the mods/admins will be busy-lets say 2 staff a week are available to look at approvals, a laughably low number), that's your 20 approvals/week right there, which should frankly take about 5 minutes. Every other week. With only 2 staff. Of the *five.*

If all five spend 5 minutes a week- which I frankly hope they certainly can- that's 100 approvals, right there. Out of the ~40 that come in that week. For effectively five minutes a week. In 5 months the queue is gone- basically half the time it took to make the queue, while staying on top of the new stuff.

Spend a whopping *ten* minutes? Two months. The staff make a concerted, hour-long effort to clean it out? The queue is empty. Right then and there.

And most of them are likely spam, easily identified by the username or email- a quick 'that may be legit' or 'that's an instant no,' because most people, frankly, don't have emails like jsdf9yhisefh9sfd7j@mohtivin.com or something.
Because these are the accounts that's already triggered the spam detection software, it's just not 100% confident they're spammers, and it would rather err on the side of human intervention. They dont need deep investigation, they just need a sanity check. I know approval requests don't take 30 minutes to do 20 of them, because I've written an approval system for my own forum software, and the entire point is to be able to burn through them quickly. 20 in five minutes should be child's play. Thirty in 5 minutes should be leisurely.

In the case of a 'huge surge' throwing off my nice, averaged numbers? Something like 300 new approvals appearing between logins? Well, unless we have a random, obvious surge of new users OUTSIDE the ones the spam system isn't sure of, we probably didn't get linked to, we got a bot network pointed at us, easy shit, arm the nukes.

Or hell, even automate that further and use an SFS plugin or refine the config for an existing plugin if we have one and effectively eliminate probably ~90% of it and crush down the approval queue.

There are options here. They just need the staff, collectively, to do something, rather than nothing. I get that this is a call for help topic.... but there is no magic bullet here from the forum-goers. This is, frankly, an internal staff issue. You should be discussing with the rest of the staff if they're going to do their fair share of work, and if they aren't, explore replacements or additional staffing.

Staffing a forum does, in fact, require some work. It's one of the reasons why I gave up the adminship to people who supposedly *did* want to do that work, so we didn't have another Hawk situation.
 
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