Hi, I'd like to know more about how to deal with spam posts. What should we do?

IMHO replying to spam is bad; the thread should just be left to die. I think just reporting it without replying to it is better, but what happens if everyone who sees a topic reports it? Do lots of duplicate reports create problems or is it OK for everybody to report?

If everyone reports the spam threads, the Mods will get flooded with PM's about the same thing. They need to be alerted somehow, quickly and efficiently.

A few of people should be in charge of reporting spam, and everyone else should be informed of who those people are so theres no floods of messages going round about the same thing.

Well, I wasn't talking about PMs but the button.

My bad.

Still, how many reports are required for a mod to look into the situation?

One.

The problem simply happens because sometimes there's no moderator active & awake.

And for the love of god, don't reply to spam threads. You just bump them up in the forum causing more people to click, further encouraging the spammer to keep at it.

IMHO if a user sees a thread like "Hot sexy russian woman looking for man" they should report it.

I have just woken up to eight reports from that thread. Many thanks to the users who took the time to report it. On checking I see the thread has already been removed, and the user has been dealt with. I would rather eight reported than none. Reports are received as a PM.

I agree that replying to a thread is not a good idea, it just gives the thread more airtime than it should have.

In answer to your question skelly831, only one report is required. Generally one is enough for it to get noticed pretty quickly. I get an email to my Google account (which I can view at home and work) when I receive a PM.

In the example of the thread above it seems that it was posted at a time when the mods were inactive, which meant that it was alive for around six hours. In other circumstances I have managed to remove threads before anyone else has seen them.

Thanks for creating this thread kjoonlee. After looking at the thread quoted it seemed like some questions needed answering.

Edit: Damn! With my just-woken-up typing speed I was beaten to the punch.

Some weeks ago, i updated TOS #14 to cover this. I thought about making an announcement too, but then didn't make one.

Anyway, if you use the Report button, all the right people will get a PM (which also triggers an email for most) with a link to the offending post. Usually the response time is quite short then.

I think an announcement would be worthwhile, as each time I see a spam, I see people bumping it. (Admittedly, I usually get a post in there too, but I _ONLY_ post if the message is #1 on the front page, and only to tell other users to not bump the thread; that I reported it.)