What's the best way to deal with bulk forum spam?
Quote from CB Wright on December 19, 2019, 2:40 pmI ran into a rather frustrating problem the other day, and it appears Asgaros doesn’t, at present, have any tools that can easily handle it.
A few spambots managed to slip through my bot-catchers, register an Asgaros account, and start posting content. By the time I noticed and banned each “user,” one had made 150 posts on my forum, another about 40, a third about 20, and a fourth had made eight or nine. Asgaros let me ban the users, which is great, but the posts were still there. Roughly 230 posts. And all I could do, it seemed, is delete them one at a time.
Are there any options for dealing with this that I’m not seeing? Deleting 230 posts one at a time, by hand, is stretching the limits of practicality.
I ran into a rather frustrating problem the other day, and it appears Asgaros doesn’t, at present, have any tools that can easily handle it.
A few spambots managed to slip through my bot-catchers, register an Asgaros account, and start posting content. By the time I noticed and banned each “user,” one had made 150 posts on my forum, another about 40, a third about 20, and a fourth had made eight or nine. Asgaros let me ban the users, which is great, but the posts were still there. Roughly 230 posts. And all I could do, it seemed, is delete them one at a time.
Are there any options for dealing with this that I’m not seeing? Deleting 230 posts one at a time, by hand, is stretching the limits of practicality.
Quote from msleeper on December 21, 2019, 5:24 pmI think anti-spam features would be a great addition, and I hope they get added.
In the meantime, if you are comfortable running queries on your database, you can run these 2 queries to bulk delete any posts and topics from the users:
DELETE FROM wp_forum_posts WHERE author_id = '[User ID of spammer here]'; DELETE FROM wp_forum_topics WHERE author_id = '[User ID of spammer here]';That will delete any posts, followed by any topics, from the user. Any replies to these topics made by other users will be orphaned, and I don’t know how Asgaros handles that (if at all) so you would need a more robust solution to make sure all posts in those topics get deleted.
I think anti-spam features would be a great addition, and I hope they get added.
In the meantime, if you are comfortable running queries on your database, you can run these 2 queries to bulk delete any posts and topics from the users:
DELETE FROM wp_forum_posts WHERE author_id = '[User ID of spammer here]'; DELETE FROM wp_forum_topics WHERE author_id = '[User ID of spammer here]';
That will delete any posts, followed by any topics, from the user. Any replies to these topics made by other users will be orphaned, and I don’t know how Asgaros handles that (if at all) so you would need a more robust solution to make sure all posts in those topics get deleted.
Quote from msleeper on February 2, 2023, 8:14 pmHas there been any updates or changes regarding bulk user management in this way? For example, I would like to go to a user’s profile page and have an option to delete all of their topics and posts (in addition to the “Ban User” option). If this feature does not exist yet, is this on a roadmap in the future?
Has there been any updates or changes regarding bulk user management in this way? For example, I would like to go to a user’s profile page and have an option to delete all of their topics and posts (in addition to the “Ban User” option). If this feature does not exist yet, is this on a roadmap in the future?
Quote from Asgaros on March 8, 2023, 8:00 amHello @msleeper-com
A while ago I added a new feature: When you delete a user, an option will appear which allows you to remove all of his posts and topics as well.
Hello @msleeper-com
A while ago I added a new feature: When you delete a user, an option will appear which allows you to remove all of his posts and topics as well.