What is it with project admins? Why do they never check their message boards?

The recent torrent of spam has rendered a couple of projects boards unusable. Some project's 'report post' facility doesn't work, other projects it's clearly being ignored.

Perhaps these are just zombie projects - The admins are slumped, lifeless, over flickering CRT monitors, festooned in cobwebs, while rats chew at their decaying flesh. Meanwhile the work generators churn out tasks for hungry crunchers who blissfully believe that their work is useful and valued ...

Admins: Sort. it. Out.

Cheers,

Al.

Come check out theSkyNet.org forums we're 99% spam free :)
In other news any hints from other admins on how to stop spammers rather than just suspending their accounts?

Cheers
Alex
theSkyNet.org WebMaster

::cough:: Renderfarm.fi ::cough::

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My Detailed BOINC Stats

The volume of SPAM postings across the various BOINC projects message boards (and here very recently) has been getting worse every day for almost 6 months now.

It's very sad to see this happening and a day has not gone by in the past week where I have not encountered these "trash" messages on one or more projects. Sometimes even the same "user name" has spammed several sites in the day.

On the well maintained projects I almost or NEVER see this garbage. There are other projects where obviously these administrator(s) do not bother to "patrol" their message boards until someone either PM's them and / or "Red X" the "junk" messages.

Then there are a few projects where you can not even flag the message(s) and when you attempt to PM the administrator(s) you can not do so because they have not set things up correctly.

Maybe it is time for us to flex our CPU and GPU power, quit crunching for these offending sites and move our resources to the well maintained sites.

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I've only noticed the spam at one or two of the projects I visit regularly, and they've been taken care of in fairly short order.

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My Detailed BOINC Stats

Until a couple of weeks ago, the attack against spam was pretty difficult, one could only hide the thread and banish the author. At least now the threads can also be deleted, although that still requires quite a bit of work, as I found out here. So room for improvement and an easier, faster UI.

The amount of spam is on the rise though. The past week I had to come in action to banish 7 spammers, which between them left over 30 threads behind. I still hide them before deleting them, so we have proof in email that I hide spam threads, not your threads. :-)

Aside from that, we have the automated spammer deletion script, which deletes user accounts with an URL or with a profile but no posts in the forums. This one is slightly buggy, I saw, so also room for improvement. But still, it's easier than having to crawl through the accounts list by hand and deleting individuals from the database. I have given up on adding all that crap to the Trac database, as it was becoming a day job and I am not much available off late.

So any ideas you have, throw them down here. All to make life as a spammer hunter/banisher easier. :)

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OBVIOUSLY THE ADMIN(S) OF Beal@Home PROJECT ARE ABSENT / DEADBEAT(S)
--- HERE IS JUST SOME OF THE PROOF ---

Beal Forum Threads:
What's happening?
Download errors
Can not upload or download new Tasks

Probably a bit off topic... but I gave up on cosmology at home because I got tired of talking to myself... it's okay for awhile but got a bit boring to be honest... haven't been back there for ages... wonder if anything has changed...

The Drug Discovery Boards have been completely purged of spam.

The Drug Discovery Boards have been completely purged of spam.

That didn't last long - The spam is back :(

Cheers,

Al.

The Drug Discovery Boards have been completely purged of spam.

That didn't last long - The spam is back :(

Cheers,

Al.

It's gone now--I clean it up every day to every other day depending on my schedule.

I think is a problem of respect. "I give you my cpu/gpu power (and sometimes my time), you give me some informations". A lot of project's admins think only to raw power and not to "loyalty" volunteers.
I know, i know, they have lessons, workshop, books to write, etc, but a little time for us is not so difficult.

I couldn't agree more.
We try our best to respond to people as fast as possible and will always try to provide direct feedback to our users as to what their computer is doing. At theSkyNet POGS for example we can show an image for every galaxy your computers have worked on and even highlight which section specific section of the galaxy your computer is responsible for processing.

Cheers
Alex
theSkyNet.org Webmaster

I have repeatedly asked the admin of DrugDiscovery@home to enable a minimum RAC requirement including code I was given from Ageless to do so. He has not done so and I'm fighting an unending battle against the spammers.

I will no longer put forth as much effort to keep the forums clean if he won't help me by enabling that code.

Sorry friends

Blurf, I do not blame you for not wanting to help when the Project Owner/Admin(s) REFUSE to take such simple steps.

I gave up on cosmology at home because I got tired of talking to myself... it's okay for awhile but got a bit boring to be honest...

This is disrespect by admins of project.

LOL, I am one of the moderators at Cosmology@Home, but can you believe me when I say I haven't got a clue who the administrators there are at this moment? ;-)

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What is it with project admins? Why do they never check their message boards?

The recent torrent of spam has rendered a couple of projects boards unusable. Some project's 'report post' facility doesn't work, other projects it's clearly being ignored.

Perhaps these are just zombie projects - The admins are slumped, lifeless, over flickering CRT monitors, festooned in cobwebs, while rats chew at their decaying flesh. Meanwhile the work generators churn out tasks for hungry crunchers who blissfully believe that their work is useful and valued ...

Admins: Sort. it. Out.

Cheers,

Al.

There isn't necessarily spam, but your "zombie project" illustration is exactly how I see Enigma@home. :P

Most likely Dr. David Anderson is not around at BOINC doing the business of moderating user posts as well as dealing with user spam.

No, for the moderating he has a dedicated team. For the dealing with (user) spam he's got a script. For the dealing with you, he has me.

Does anyone know right now what is the main purpose of Seti@home, for example? Is there a set goal for what we really are looking for and want to achieve?

The same what their goal always has been: searching for signals by extraterrestrial intelligence.

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