Spam filter for forums

It seems like over the last few months the amount of daily spam in the forums has been increasing drastically. Would it be possible to implement a filter to just prevent topics with certain words in the title from being posted?

For example, any topics including the phrases "escort services", "black magic", "vashikaran", "love solution", etc just don't show up in the forums. If you look at the titles of the spam topics, removing those phrases alone would remove >90% of the spam.

I know you guys aren't really making too many changes right now since V3 is coming out soon, but please consider implemeting something like this in V3. I'm sure it gets tedious having to delete hundreds of threads like this a day, so it would make your job easier, and clean up the forums a bit.

That won't stop spam in other languages.

        The spammers will simply avoid the offending words.

Every solution has a workaround, so we do nothing, that seems to be the policy

It would be easier to limit member's posting to 1/h.

1. The spam has been almost exclusively English.

2. The spammers are probably bots that just surf the web, pasting the same message on dozens of forums. I really doubt they would remove certain words just because their posts are being blocked on one forum.

That would also be a good idea. I've heard suggestions that we could also use a point system; for example, you start with 10 points, every topic that you make costs 10, and every time you reply to a different topic you get +5.

Would it be possible to create a filter that blocks thread titles that have more than a certain amount of numerals in them? I'm wondering if something like that would help.

Pre-moderate comments for new members. It's standard internet practice.

The spammer attempts to get people call a phone number. Simply block posts with phone numbers in them. Ther eis no legitmate reason why any one would want to post their phone number here.

In all fairness, they have been much more active about getting the messages cleared. I remember before the messages would be on there for several hours. Now they usually seem to be cleared out in less than an hour.

Prevention is better than cure.

Yes, of course. My point was just that they have not done nothing, they have taken steps to lessen the impact of the spam.

That's because they basically have a staff member patrolling the forums 24/7 now. Definitely not the best use of their time.

I just thought of something smart. Install filters, but don't tell which ones.

For instance, place filters for thread with the words:

+91
Vashikiran
etc etc

Usually when you post such a thread the forum will message something like "not allowed to post threads with +91". Then ofcourse people are going for workarounds. But if you dont tell WHY a thread was bounced then they have to guess why.

Still the best solution.

Filters just mean they change the text.

Unless you dont tell what the filters are...

I was leaning toward this idea myself until I realized messages have to wait for someone to approve them. It seems this step could disturb the flow of normal messages.

Plus, of course, it would give mods the opportunity to delete messages from users they don't like or messages they personally don't feel are worthy of Chess.com.

Wouldn't take long to figure out.

Or you can just use a brute force approach and keep trying with different versions of the text.

Filters are only ever temporary solutions.

Or only 1 thread per day for basic members.