Freesound Forums
I think the star rating system is flawed, and needs this improvement:
Started October 11th, 2016 · 24 replies · Latest reply by strangely_gnarled 7 years, 8 months ago
adamtours: another spammer? No uploads! No Downloads! No useful contribution to forums! Just links to another commercial site!
strangely_gnarled wrote:
adamtours: another spammer? No uploads! No Downloads! No useful contribution to forums! Just links to another commercial site!
Remember to use the report button on posts like these. The reports are sent to admin and the users/posts will be dealt with.
Thanks
I am the thing that goes bump in the night...
Freesound Housekeeper
Hi Headphaze,
Thanks, but yes, I use the spam button regularly, and have previously clicked adamtours amongst many other posts based on the same criteria. I.e. recent-ish user, no uploads, no downloads, no sensible comments and/or cut-and-paste posts that have been on the web since 2012, and links to commercial websites not even vaguely related to sound or recording.
Many but not all usernames or linked sites appear on the forum https://www.stopforumspam.com/search. If I had kept a log I could probably list 40 to 50 new-ish users who have signed up, waited about 1 month then started putting up these posts and links.
Clicking the report spam button doesn't seem to get them taken down. I understand the difficulty for admin, who have plenty other stuff to do with their freely given time; It requires lots of further investigation to be confident it is spam. I myself appear to have already jumped to a wrong conclusion once and flagged up a legitimate user to whom I've since apologised.
The spam-bots are getting evermore clever at evading detection and it's only going to get worse as the race to climb the search engine rankings becomes all out war. Google started this problem with it's algorithm which rates the popularity of a site by the number(weighted) of links pointing to it. Now the game is to pepper the web with as many links as you can that don't get taken down straight away. Start-up Web Services that do nothing but post this spam for their commercial clients are becoming millionaires overnight. Sites (like Freesound) that don't have the resources to fight this are going to be the fertile fields where the spam-weeds grow and choke out the genuine flowers!
Another rant over,
Regards,
Wibby.