"Comment Held in Moderation"

Athol_Kay · September 2015

There's been a weird bug we've had strike periodically where a comment from a long time member is "held in moderation." Except we don't hold comments in moderation and the mods can see nothing in the moderation holding cell.

What is actually happening is members who didn't verify their email address when first getting a membership, occasionally get flagged as spam. Most likely if linking off the forum in their comment. So the comments don't go to moderation, they go to the spam filter.

If this happens to you, leave a comment below or message @Athol_Kay, @Jen_Kay or @Serenity. The comment can now be fished out of the spam filter and the member verified and it shouldn't happen again to that member.

As an aside, the spam the forum faces is completely insane at this point. We're getting 100-120 spam memberships a day now getting caught in the filters.

seriously · September 2015

I didn't get the message last night, but all of a sudden, any post that had previously gotten it, was posted. Just FYI.

Pen_and_Sword · September 2015

Thanks for keeping this place running. There is so much good and new-to-me stuff in your books, I don't know how I'd process it if I couldn't "talk" about it. But, like the man said, you can't talk to your immediate friends about such intimate topics. Appreciate it.

Athol_Kay · September 2015

seriously said:

I didn't get the message last night, but all of a sudden, any post that had previously gotten it, was posted. Just FYI.

Yeah I found a comment of yours on about page 13 of the spam filter. I verified your email address, which apparently fishes everything out of the spam filter rather than just that one comment.

Thanks!

Athol_Kay · September 2015

This morning we're getting a spam membership request every 6 minutes going into the spam filters. I shit you not.

al2682 · September 2015

Your spam filters seem real good. Do you review for false negative (legit membership). I would think that would take a lot of time.

We all appreciate the time and effort you put in on the forum!

post 500. Woot woot!

The_Dude · September 2015

Re: Spam. Is the Captcha working? Can you increase its length?

Athol_Kay · September 2015

The_Dude said:

Re: Spam. Is the Captcha working? Can you increase its length?

We're a layer after the captcha at this point, as now new members need to write a reason they want to join the forum in a text box.

We're literally catching 100-120 bots a day writing something in the text box to say why they want to join the forum.

You can't join the forum anymore without a manual approval from me, Jen or Rebecca.

Tiger · September 2015

Crazy, I was thinking about this problem the other day. What about charging $1 for a forum account that can post? One time fee of $1 for basic "can post" access. Then the spam would generate $100 a day or more likely just vanish.

Free is seldom the best price when you have something of high value to offer. Anyone not willing to spend $1 is not in enough pain to listen to our help anyway.

Athol_Kay · September 2015

Tiger said:

Crazy, I was thinking about this problem the other day. What about charging $1 for a forum account that can post? One time fee of $1 for basic "can post" access. Then the spam would generate $100 a day or more likely just vanish.

Free is seldom the best price when you have something of high value to offer. Anyone not willing to spend $1 is not in enough pain to listen to our help anyway.

Unfortunately Vanilla doesn't have a paid membership option.

Tiger · September 2015

Bummer, is sticking with vanilla a requirement?

Or maybe just the current sweet spot in the pain/simplicity space.

codename_duchess · October 2015

Just had one on the "Never had an orgasm" thread. Could a mod please fish it out?

Angeline · October 2015

The quotes are acting up again. It's wrapping the div and blockquote tags around everything, not just the original quote, so that the new text gets pushed up with the quoted text.

HildaCorners · October 2015

Angeline said:

The quotes are acting up again. It's wrapping the div and blockquote tags around everything, not just the original quote, so that the new text gets pushed up with the quoted text.

There's a fairly easy way around this, if you're on a computer. [I don't know if you can do this on a phone/tablet.]

Click the < / > (without spaces) icon in the comment toolbar, scroll to the very end of the quote, and start typing your comment. As long as you have at least one character typed, you can click the same icon to go back to the regular view of your comment.

What this does: The < / > command puts you in html mode, where you see the codes that generate formatting. Scrolling to the bottom gets you past all the formatting codes, so whatever you type is outside them. And once you're past all the codes, everything is plain text again, so you can go back to the normal view.

Angeline · October 2015

HildaCorners said:
There's a fairly easy way around this, if you're on a computer. [I don't know if you can do this on a phone/tablet.]

Click the < / > (without spaces) icon in the comment toolbar, scroll to the very end of the quote, and start typing your comment. As long as you have at least one character typed, you can click the same icon to go back to the regular view of your comment.

What this does: The < / > command puts you in html mode, where you see the codes that generate formatting. Scrolling to the bottom gets you past all the formatting codes, so whatever you type is outside them. And once you're past all the codes, everything is plain text again, so you can go back to the normal view.

Sigh. Yes I know this. I too used to do web design.
It added them to my repaired html after I fid the above steps.