Under Consideration I think we may need to prevent new accounts from adding links to their posts

[roydan]

In 2 separated cases (that I've seen) from the last two days there were spam accounts posting links.

I think we tried enabling it but the reality is that in 95/100 cases - a newbie that posts a link is shilling for themselves rather than giving an honest recommendation.

I suggest preventing users with less than 10 posts or 10 trophies from posting links - or - automatically change their links to the OO homepage so it's less noticable.

 

[Zwielicht]

I just handled the report on that account now and I saw the one yesterday as well.

I mainly don’t want to restrict new, genuine members, so I was hesitant to restrict an account’s ability to add links. However, I think this is worth discussing given the back-to-back incidences.

Just to let everyone know about those accounts, the one from today joined June 23rd and only ever posted twice: both times to spam an ad on their proxy service. The one I saw yesterday was a new sign-up that only joined to spam.

Neither were genuine members, so they’ve been banned.

 

[t2van]

I just handled the report on that account now and I saw the one yesterday as well.

I mainly don’t want to restrict new, genuine members, so I was hesitant to restrict an account’s ability to add links. However, I think this is worth discussing given the back-to-back incidences.

Just to let everyone know about those accounts, the one from today joined June 23rd and only ever posted twice: both times to spam an ad on their proxy service. The one I saw yesterday was a new sign-up that only joined to spam.

Neither were genuine members, so they’ve been banned.

They can still post a URL even if its genuine it just won't be a click able link?

That solves that?

 

[roydan]

They can still post a URL even if its genuine it just won't be a click able link?

That solves that?

Yes, it would. I think that most spammers use anchors anyways so this will essentially block this behaviour.

 

[Zwielicht]

They can still post a URL even if its genuine it just won't be a click able link?

That solves that?

That solution works for me.

Alternatively, if this can’t be done easily, I believe I can also send posts from newbie accounts that post links to the approval queue as well.

I’ll look into this more later this week. No need for the 10 upvotes for this one since it’s something we should definitely add in for the community.