Why?

[Canary42]

Why was the Richard III post expunged - I spent several minutes compiling a perfectly reasonable response.

Now all gone in the blink of an eye.

Small wonder I never donate.

[ToraToraTora]

landf bot canary

[Modster]

I apologise for the loss of your post, Canary42, but the thread had been started by yet another incarnation of the troll.  Had I seen it a little earlier, it would have gone then.

[ToraToraTora]

before spending any effort look at the time and date of joining canary, it's usually within the last hour.

[Canary42]

Thank you both for the explanation.

[Toorak]

Like last night the mods are up against it but are doing a great job removing the troll/bot posts as quickly as possible

[douglas9401]

Could we all just do the adult thing and ignore posts from Kamchatka instead of revelling in erasing the dross?

 

It's neither big nor clever.

[ToraToraTora]

Sadly this site does not seem to have any decent techies to stop this sort of thing.

[douglas9401]

Well there's something else you could volunteer to shadow.

Don't be shy.

[THECORBYLOON]

TORATORATORA, do you have suggestions for what could be done,

[ToraToraTora]

I could fix it, yes but I doubt they'd let me. I could also tell them how to fix it but hey ho they ban me every five miniutes for annoying the owners nephew.

[JimF]

Is that also what's happened here?

[JimF]

Sorry, forgot the link:

https://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question1851318-3.html

[THECORBYLOON]

You should e-mail the EDs with your afvice so they can consider whether it is feasible and affordable.

 

[Toorak]

JimF - yes

[JimF]

There's a lot that can be done to prevent spam bots. E.g. a simple CAPTCHA system where the user is asked not to select which squares on an image contain motorbikes but show two numbers as images and ask what they add up to. This is very easy for humans but not so easy for bots.

Another way is to implement what's called a "honeypot" trap where the sign-up form contains a hidden field that bots will scrape and fill in but is not visible to humans.

Of course, if LandF isn't a bot and is actually a person (which seems unlikely but not impossible), then neither of the above suggestions will work...

[ToraToraTora]

Here's a clue, what do other sites use to stop themselves getting overrun by bots?

[ToraToraTora]

Listen to your uncle jimF, he knows what to do.

[ABSpareEditor]

"Small wonder I never donate."

Then I won't bother looking into this. 😉 I am joking!

I will reinstate your post and make sure the on-topic answers are reinstated. 

[ABSpareEditor]

Who posted the Richard III thread? 

[THECORBYLOON]

MODSTER posted in this thread, 

 

"I apologise for the loss of your post, Canary42, but the thread had been started by yet another incarnation of the troll. "