Spam wave and bulk deletion of user and posts?

poVoq

My Flarum forum is currently being hit by a spam-wave and the tools to delete spam users and post are very limited.

I can't even bulk-delete users from the admin interface...

Any suggestions on how to improve this?

MikeJones

Get first post approval. It's the best spam tool here in my opinion.

poVoq

MikeJones Yes, I have that of course, but that doesn't make cleaning up the mess that the spammers make (invisible to the users) any easier.

CyberGene

Also install StopForumSpam which can make it more difficult for spammers to use throwaway mail addresses, etc.

Eldenroot

Anyway, some extension is missing 🙁

GreXXL

There a quite an extensive number of extensions available to improve spam handling. We have highlighted many of those in a past community update. Maybe it helps as an inspiration: https://discuss.flarum.org/d/29126-community-updates-092021

poVoq

GreXXL None of these make it easier to clean up the mess, which is what this post is asking about.

If there was at least a check box and a delete button on the user list in the admin menu...

Eldenroot

There should be something like -> purge a user including deleting all of his content (posts/threads etc.).

MyBB has this feature, and it is quite useful 🙂

Kulga

Eldenroot There should be something like -> purge a user including deleting all of his content (posts/threads etc.).

Like FOF Spamblock?

poVoq

Kulga Yes I use spam-block too and it is a bit useful, but all it does is suspend the users and soft-delete all their posts. Why would I want to soft-delete spam? In what scenario would I ever want to restore spam?

So it is still very manual work to perm-delete each and every spam user and post individually...

010101

What if all of the wonderful fof spam extensions were eventually just one big extension? Too hard to keep updated?

And then my only other thought is: I’m sure folks wish that eventually, in core, you could go to the admin users page and do just a little bit more. Such as bulk actions. And/or, delete user with a few options such as leave posts, don’t leave posts, assign posts to another user, and things like that. All likely would take significant development time. And potentially leans away from the goal of keeping core super minimal.

meihuak

i also can not search a specified user in the management background

Kulga

poVoq In what scenario would I ever want to restore spam?

This is my own experience and opinion, 🧂
I don't handle much spam on my forum, I have a number of moderators and community members who keep a watch on this and can mark a user as a spammer.
The problem with hard deletes is accountability through auditing and mistakes.
If I check a users actions and see they marked a user as a spammer, I can check some of those posts and say "yes, they did this correctly" or not. Or, if they accidentally mark a legitimate user as a spammer, it's annoying, but I can remove their spam record and restore their posts.

I will sometimes investigate spam and see if anything can be adjusted to improve spam control. A key realization I made through investigations like this was spam rapidly increases if it is ever visible, giving evidence to prefer a approval system. Or, maybe a common source of spam. Spam posts have value in preventing future spam.

Because of this I don't permanently delete any posts.

But, I also get the desire for cleaning out bad stuff, so I'm not opposed to having hard deletes possible 🙂

luceos

Maybe spam block needs an option in admin to hard delete instead of soft deleting?