PlanetCatfish.com

I've seen this on a few forums, and though having not seen many spam posts (though am sure there are more than most of us realise), woud it be of any benefit (and easy to implement) to restrict the for sale forums and only allow users to create new posts (but still be allowed to reply to existing) until, say, they have made a certain post count (have seen one forum use 50 posts and 30 days). Now i guess dealing with trivial posts to try and get the post count up could be become an issue, but just thought I'd mention it, if only to reduce the amount of work the mods have to spend dealing with this sort of problem on the forums.
Martin

What problems do we have? I am unsure what this might fix if we implemented it.

Jools

Well, none that I'm aware of. I've reported a few 'spam' posts, and that may be about all the site gets, it was just really a sugestion if the site suffered with spam selling posts, but if not, then, as you say it won't make any difference.
Martin

I don't think the spam posts are posted (in general) in the "market" section of the forum - most spam posts tend to be in places like Speak Easy and random [probably not entirely random tho'] forums like Loricariidae or African Catfish sections.

And I don't thin we're doing badly on spam, as a general rule.

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Mats

I believe a large portion of the "50 posts and 30 days" is to achieve some sort of feeling for the people if they can trust the seller/buyer or not.

But I still don't thin this is a problem that needs fixing on this forum.

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Mats

Fair enough

Jools wrote:What problems do we have? I am unsure what this might fix if we implemented it.

Jools

I don't see anything different should be done.

On www.finarama.com, the wild Angelfish forum, we are running on a shoe string budget and spamming has to be dealt with manually to a great extent which is a hassle for the administrators but my impression is that planetcatfish has more sophisticated tools and given it's much more voluminous traffic, the spam that makes it through is minimal.

The moderators do a great job of controlling the human spammers and we've taken measures against spambots that make other sites more attractive than ours. So, if it's aimed as an anti-spam measure, then I don't think we need it.

If it's a measure of how reliable someone is that's selling something, then that's not a good metric. On ebay I could sell 100 tealights at 50p each and then a BMW at a grand. Aside from the fact it prevents choice (if I want to risk someone with one post then that's my call rather than the forums), it may also encourgae trivial posting to get a post count to a certain limit.

So, no deal!

Jools

Jools wrote:If it's a measure of how reliable someone is that's selling something, then that's not a good metric. On ebay I could sell 100 tealights at 50p each and then a BMW at a grand. Aside from the fact it prevents choice (if I want to risk someone with one post then that's my call rather than the forums), it may also encourgae trivial posting to get a post count to a certain limit.

Right, maybe I explained it badly (and incorrectly): I think the main purpose of such limits is to prevent casual sales, where the seller is not contributing to the forum, but it also allows the buyer/seller to get to know each other to SOME extent, based on conversations in the forum.

Whilst there are a few people that post in the for sale section that hasn't contributed much elsewhere, I don't see any reason to change anything - there is no problem that this would solve.

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Mats

MatsP wrote:most spam posts tend to be in places like Speak Easy and random [probably not entirely random tho'] forums like Loricariidae or African Catfish sections.

Yeah, I think the spammers just post in the forums with the most posts/activity, i.e. the loricariid forum.