Soapbox posts, first time users

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freitasm

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#147187 11-Jun-2014 22:12

Many of you probably saw a topic created this week (9th June 2014) where a new user posted a long complaint about a telco and their billing practices. After a couple of days the topic had ten pages and was going nowhere, with a majority of comments not supporting the OP's point of view and the ones that agreed with the principle did not see the reason to fight for it, seeing it involved a revolving credit in the low single digits.

Anyway, there is a reason why we (most of the times) remove and ban newusers that post "soapbox" topics. We have a lot of experience around here and we try to keep it clean.

As I said in this specific case the discussion was going nowhere so ScottPalmer locked the thread. That was enough for the OP to say via PM that we locked the discussion at this telco's request. When Scott denied it and said the account would be banned the OP replied with this gem:

Moderator or not, frankly from your last reply before you so-called "locked" the thread, it's more than obvious you're either a [telco name removed] employee or a fanatical cult member who blindly worships [telco name removed]. I suspect it's the former, so don't bother denying it. I just sympathise with the true users of Geekzone, they will never get to see any unbiased comments or moderation from this forum. Do you what you will, your pathetic attempt to intimidate amuses me.

We remove soapbox post from first time users and will continue to do so. If someone comes here looking for help we can almost immediately see this by the tone of the first post. We do not accept trolls - except of course the ones we know around here ;)

This is why that topic was removed and the user banned.

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nakedmolerat

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#1063727 11-Jun-2014 22:44

mattwnz: Maybe preventing new posters from starting a new thread, unless they have made 5 posts in existing threads, could be an idea to stop it occurring. This is what some forums do to stop this, and to also stop spammers.

I disagree.

It doesn't happen that often to warrant this.

johnr

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#1063730 11-Jun-2014 22:50

Maybe first thread & post are first viewed by a mod and needs to be approved that it meets FUG

freitasm

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#1064036 12-Jun-2014 13:15

Satch: Is TimA correct mods? You rely on other members reporting spam posts (or "stumbling" across them yourselves)?

How many new users are set up each week out of interest?

We have automated routines in place to automatically detect spam words, spam accounts, login from suspicious IP addresses, geo restrictions (users in some countries can only post if trusted), etc. We can't read all the posts that come in a day (thousands of posts a day) so the community helps a lot by reporting suspicious activities such as spam, FUG breaches, etc.

Everyone is a "moderator" in a sense. Once a post is reported moderators are notified and will deal with it - removing the post, banning the user, editing post, or just clearing the report as sometimes we don't think it's a breach. We receive a few reports a day but the average is pretty low.

This involvement is what makes Geekzone a great community.