SparkFun Electronics Forum

Due to the increase in SPAM following Free Day, all newly registered users will have their posts moderated. If you see a message saying that your post is being held for moderation, please do not try to post the same thing again. It too will be moderated and you run the risk of having them deleted since it is a lot easier to simply delete them all instead of approving one and deleting the other. Be patient and your post will be approved as soon as possible.

After a predetermined amount of posts being reached with your username, post moderation will be turned off automatically. The people behind the scenes hope this will only be a temporary inconvenience until the spam attempts slow down again.

Cheers!

-Bill

edit: Once your first post is approved, your account will no longer be moderated. If you make several different posts before your first one is approved, all of them will be moderated.

That's what I do with the Yahoo groups I run. Spam is negligible. I only moderate the first post, though.

leon_heller wrote:I only moderate the first post, though.

The more I've been thinking about it, I'll probably do the same.

-Bill

It only takes me about 15 minutes a day to keep on top of my Yahoo groups, which have a total of about 10,000 members. Given that you have about 22,000 members, my guess is that it will take someone about 30 minutes a day for your forum. I check several times a day, to minimize delays.

The occasional piece of spam does slip through, though; I think that someone's account gets spoofed. I simply ban the member.

So does that mean this post (my first one) will be moderated? May as well get that outta the way...

BTW thanks Sparkfun for good products, prices, information and Free Day!

I posted over 4 days ago... will I get an email when it's approved?

hi, how do i know if my post is under moderation? i did not receive any message saying my post is under moderation, and when i click on "view your post" it says i do not have any post. (p.s. its my first time coming for help in this forum)

Are there no phpbb3 modules to allow user moderation? IE. If over 10 users flag a post as spam its removed (or flat out deleted) and flagged to allow an admin to deal with it as they seem fit.

I just started posting here recently, and I noticed that after a while, the "edit" button on my posts went missing. When first posted, the "edit" button was there, but later in the day, there was no edit button. I did verify that I was logged in to the forum as myself. Since I just started posting, could the new moderation be the reason that this is happening, or was this here before the new moderation was taken into effect?

Edit buttons normaly only have a finite life. They also disappear as soon as somebody else posts. This prevents revisionary history. Not sure what parameters SFE has set up, but I suspect something like the above.

It was fairly common to see threads that had been deleted by people who had their questions answered or came to the realization that they did something silly. Since deleted posts don't help the community at all, the forum has been set to prevent people from editing or deleting their posts after 20 minutes.

-Bill

I've noticed a general increase in spam across many forums recently - not just Sparkfun. Have a look at www.stopforumspam.com for a blacklist. There are one or two plugins for phpBB listed there that might help.

If you're running PHPBB3.0.4 or later go to:
ACP/General/Post Settings

Enable queued posts: "yes"
Maximum post count for queued posts: "1"

New members must have their first post approved before they can post normally without further approval.
When they post they will see a notification that the post must be approved before becoming publicly viewable. Once approved they will get an email saying so.

It works really well.... been using it for quite some time now. Before it became a feature of PHPBB we were using a mod that did the same thing.

I'm not sure if the feature is included in PHPBB3.03.

Hi.
Another new user here. Does the moderation also apply to private messages? It seems that I cannot write any.

raphman wrote:Hi.
Another new user here. Does the moderation also apply to private messages? It seems that I cannot write any.

Works now, after approval of the previous message. Thanks.