Automatic Content Moderation Based on Language

[Chris027]

We are fighting a huge spam problem that can’t be stopped by the IPS spam protections available. We even enabled two factor authentication and that doesn’t stop the onslaught of Spam. 

The only thing all messages have in common is Korean language. 

I’m requesting the ability to moderate content automatically based on language. For example, if language doesn’t equal English then hold for moderation. 

This would be amazing. 

[Ramsesx]

34 minutes ago, Chris027 said:

We are fighting a huge spam problem that can’t be stopped by the IPS spam protections available. We even enabled two factor authentication and that doesn’t stop the onslaught of Spam. 

Have you tried the word filter option, maybe a way to filter a lot of korean stuff. You could add the most common words they are spamming. Blocking the country IP's would be another way.

[Chris027]

I can’t block the country IP because they come from every country. 

 

Ill try some korean words for filtering. 

[bfarber]

This suggestion is actually quite a bit more difficult than it sounds. Determining what language the submitted content is in is a challenge (especially since content could be submitted in more than one language within a single post).

[Chris027]

That makes sense, but leaves me feeling a bit helpless to stop this stuff without manually approving every member. Even that is problematic because I can't always spot the telltale signs of a spammer with only an IP address and email address to go on.

 

Anyone else have an idea?

[opentype]

Do you use the Question and Answer Challenge with questions specific to your community topic? That’s usually the best way to stop foreign spammers or bots. They just can’t answer those easily. 

[Chris027]

Just now, opentype said:

Do you use the Question and Answer Challenge with questions specific to your community topic? That’s usually the best way to stop foreign spammers or bots. They just can’t answer those easily. 

I've tried that, but it was no problem for these guys. They also use 2FA when enabled. They are relentless.

[bfarber]

One solution is to put newly registered users in a group with very heavy restrictions. Require their posts to be moderated before they are shown publicly, for instance, and then you can automatically promote these users to an unrestricted group after a handful of approved posts.

This allows them to register and start posting, but then requires a moderator to approve however many posts you decide before their posts are automatically approved moving forward.

[Chris027]

Thanks for the suggestion. 

I just like to remove all potential friction for people joining the community and getting questions answered etc... Everyone is so conditioned to having everything right now. A delay on my part to moderate initial posts can be a showstopper for some people. Hopefully not the majority. 

[cowbell]

I used to get hammered with these around 5 years ago on my phpbb forum.

I was able to successfully eliminate these by using a regular expression in the word filter looking for either any Korean unicode chars in the post or looking for posts with no English unicode chars.

[Fosters]

11 hours ago, cowbell said:

I used to get hammered with these around 5 years ago on my phpbb forum.

I was able to successfully eliminate these by using a regular expression in the word filter looking for either any Korean unicode chars in the post or looking for posts with no English unicode chars.

That's also what we're doing in 

Right now we have Cyrillic and Han, will have to look for Korean unicodes as well.