Silk Road forums

Except, ironically, the Newbie board is the only place the scammer can post.

I think switching to vBulletin would be better as it supports a lot of plugins and has a lot of spam prevention addons.

vBulletin is proprietary and requires a $100 per year license. Of course, there are pirated copies floating around, and really, what are they going to do, threaten SR to take it down?

There are other more severe methods of preventing or in some cases completely eradicating spam, (especially when it comes to registration) but these would require users to loose some of their 'anonymity' - some high-end forums, and websites like Google.com etc., employ phone verification.

A simpler solution is to require a Gmail address when registering. Then you hand the problem over to Google's very effective spammer blocking mechanisms. Obviously we can't do that, though.

The easiest and most effective solution is just to have more moderators. Get more moderators who live in different time zones, which would be able to monitor the forum at certain times when others can't if their busy with work/college etc.

That has problems of its own, namely trust. That was the solution they tried a few months ago and apparently someone went rogue.


BTW, to anyone who says they don't care about the spam, if you are a vendor, then all the money going to the spammer is money not going to you. The $1000 that somebody sent the spammer a few days ago is a pretty big sale that some vendor lost. This potentially affects you personally and financially, so you should care.

Actually, this might be an even better idea. At any rate, something needs to be done, because this plan clearly isn't working out...

I still support a newbie section, but yeah, it needs to be refined.

It will also prevent whistleblowers from creating shill accounts to out dirty practices or report on something that has happened IRL.  There's a lot of reasons people might not want to make certain posts under their usual handle.

And there's nothing preventing them from posting that in the Newbie section, but let's face it, there a probably twice as many shill accounts spreading FUD and bullshit as actually useful information.

scout just posted in there, though he's a global mod. What's weird is that danknugsdun posted in there. He's a vendor and a hero member, other hero members can't post. So is it just global mods and vendors?

Looks like it just went live. Hopefully this will be the end of the spam.

It's interesting that we can't post in it. That might spell the end of PGP Club, since most of those posters are newbs. If I could post in the Newbie section, I'd restart it there.

@Yareely

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
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==
=WolL
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----