Bulk banning of spammers

[adamengst]

Hi folks,

Like many others, I've seen a large number of spammers posting in my TidBITS Talk archive. Since I have very few actual users (four, to be precise) - Nabble is an archive of a mailing list - I'd like to have a checkbox next to each user name in the user list so I could select a large number of users at once and ban them, deleting their posts in the process. I've manually banned/deleted all the posts at the top level but a lot of spammers are replying to existing threads, so the only way to find and ban them is through the user list.

Is there a way to do this, or could it be added?

cheers... -Adam

[GregChapman]

If you only have four posters then why don't you promote them all to "Members" (I'm guessing they are just "Registered" at the moment). Then you can change user permissions so that only Members may post or reply. That will stop spammers instantly!

In the meantime... and this doesn't meet your request and it may be that I'm unfamiliar with mail list archives on Nabble, but...

On a Forum app there is a "Topics View" facility. This shows posts in date order, most recent first, regardless of sub-forum or topic. It should provide a quick way to see who's posted since you last logged in and you shouldn't need to trawl through lots of topics to find where the spammers have posted. It doesn't make bulk banning possible, but it should speed up finding where spam has been posted.

[adamengst]

Excellent suggestions, Greg, thank you! I've shut off posting access for Registered users and made my real people Members, so I think I'm good now. Just a matter of cleaning up the crud now.

cheers... -Adam

[adamengst]

Hmm, changing the permissions had an interesting side-effect. Registered users no longer show up in People, and although I can see a list in Manage Users, I can't change it. So there's no way to delete these Registered users, or to click them to see and delete their posts.

[GregChapman]

adamengst wrote

Hmm, changing the permissions had an interesting side-effect. Registered users no longer show up in People

That will be because on the Change Permissions screen, you removed the mark from the "Registered" column against the "Show_group_members" row.

I can see a list in Manage Users, I can't change it. So there's no way to delete these Registered users, or to click them to see and delete their posts.

It's true that you cannot remove registered users. This is considered a "feature" not a bug. Without it it would be impossible to ban a user as they could just re-register again. (As it stands at least they must use a different identity when re-registering. Usually  it's a good enough deterrent for handling an individual disgruntled user, but I accept it doesn't help with spammers robots.)

Just re-instate the permission to show Registered users while you are doing your management of unwelcome messages and then remove it again once the job is complete. Of course you could just keep the permission all the time and if your members ask who those users are, you tell them all the hassle you go through keep the forum running for them! :-)

[adamengst]

Doh! Thanks for pointing out that permissions mistake - I assumed that as admin, I'd always be able to see everyone.

All better now, with Registered users not able to do anything and Members able to post or reply.  Thanks!

cheers... -Adam