Fixing up FoF Spamblock

GreXXL

I want to propose some fixes and changes to the existing FoF Spamblock extension:

~~Fix the not_found error when marking someone a Spammer~~
Add the option within the admin interface to permanently delete discussions (instead of soft deleting)
Add the option within the admin interface to permanently delete users (instead of suspendingr)
Add the option within the admin interface to optionally change the tag of all discussions of the user (so that it can be set to a non-visible tag but to keep the history on why the account was banned)

IanM

GreXXL Fix the not_found error when marking someone a Spammer

Are you able to provide any further information surrounding this error? I see it's also been reported some time ago FriendsOfFlarum/spamblock20

On a (very quick) local test of the extension, marking a user as Spammer seems to work just fine for me 🤔

GreXXL Add the option within the admin interface to permanently delete discussions (instead of soft deleting)
Add the option within the admin interface to permanently delete users (instead of suspendingr)

Would this then add an additional option in the forum frontend when marking Spammer, ie Hide posts/discussions alongside Hard delete, same for suspending vs deleting of the user, or would the admin settings dictate the behaviour?

I'm thinking it would probably be best to present an option each time (hide/suspend or delete/delete), so that moderators can take appropriate action based on the use case?

Anyhow, if we can gain perhaps a couple more interested people, I'd certainly take this task on 🙂

luceos

Before we can enable Bounties, the following requirements:

One PR against fof spamblock (https://github.com/friendsofflarum/spamblock) for each of these:
- ~~fix the bug not_found error when marking someone as spammer~~
- the ability to permanently delete discussions and users if this setting is enabled in the settings page of this extension
- the ability to select a tag in the extensions settings page to which soft delete discussions by spammers are moved

I'm not entirely sure we want to bundle this into one bounty, but let's see how this goes.

Bounties enabled.

luceos

IanM Are you able to provide any further information surrounding this error? I see it's also been reported some time ago FriendsOfFlarum/spamblock#20

This happens every time we mark a user as spammer here on discuss, you can check the repo for the used extensions. But it includes sfs which might be throwing the error when it tries to send user data of a deleted user?

GreXXL

IanM Would this then add an additional option in the forum frontend when marking Spammer, ie Hide posts/discussions alongside Hard delete, same for suspending vs deleting of the user, or would the admin settings dictate the behaviour?

I think it's extremely important that is a option for each. Meaning that the administrator can precisely choose how he wants to handle spammers in his community.

Default: Suspend & Soft Delete
Options:

Suspend & Hard Delete
Hard Delete User & Discussions
Suspend & Soft Delete & Change Tag of all Discussions

Why? I take discuss as an example where spam is soft deleted to keep the history and reason for the suspension but all Tags get changed to "Test Posting" so it's not limiting the view of "All Discussions". Other communities have shared in respective posts that they'd prefer the spam gone completely.

IanM I'm thinking it would probably be best to present an option each time (hide/suspend or delete/delete), so that moderators can take appropriate action based on the use case?

From a moderative standpoint I strongly disagree. Having a option that has to be selected every time will take time on each process. I'd rather set this as a community standard on how Spam should be handled.

PS.: I hope there is some interest so you can pick this bounty up 🙂

Lurker

IanM I'm thinking it would probably be best to present an option each time (hide/suspend or delete/delete), so that moderators can take appropriate action based on the use case?

+1 to this. If I were an Admin or Moderator, when I mark a user as a spammer, I prefer to get the following options:

Suspend: Suspend the user and hide current and future posts/discussions (while maintaining visibility for all their previous posts/discussions that are not spam) until no longer marked as spammer
Soft Delete: Suspend the user, delete this current post/discussion and hide future posts/discussions (while maintaining visibility for all their previous posts/discussions that are not spam) until no longer marked as spammer
Hard Delete: Delete the user and delete this current post/discussion (while maintaining visibility for all their previous posts/discussions that are not spam)

And ideally, I would want to see a tag (visible to Admin and Moderator only) where suspended users are listed in an alphabetical or chronological order. This way, fellow Admins or Moderators can simply click on the user's name and see the user's last activity before they got suspended (similar to the user activity that you see when you access a user's profile). The last activity could then be made visible only to the suspended user and Admin or Moderator, but not visible to the public.

IanM

luceos thanks for the tip! I've now managed to replicate the issue locally and I'm confident this can be fixed quite easily 🙂

IanM

I've fixed the not found error and will release an update to fof/stopforumspam shortly to address this (FriendsOfFlarum/stopforumspam21)

I'd like to propose that the bounty here should simply be for the requested additional features, not for the fix here. What are your thoughts @GreXXL @luceos ?

Edit: fof/stopforumspam 1.2.3 is now available with a fix for the not found error. https://discuss.flarum.org/d/17846-friendsofflarum-stopforumspam/104

luceos

IanM I'd like to propose that the bounty here should simply be for the requested additional features, not for the fix here. What are your thoughts @GreXXL @luceos ?

Agreed.

GreXXL

IanM implying that you would implement this - what would be a necessary goal to give this a chance of implementation?

luceos

GreXXL you are aware that keeping spam discussions in the testing tag is meant as a temporary archive as the testing tag is regularly truncated? I think this behavior is very much unique to how we handle spam on discuss honestly..

GreXXL

luceos yes I am aware. I think that having a tag that is not visible of "All Discussions" that gets truncated regularly is a good thing for a big community though. This means that other moderation staff will have a chance to see why a user has been banned - or a user can appeal to his suspension if it was an mistake - while it's not getting hold back for eternity to block resources. So I think this is a valid option besides just soft / hard deleting discussions.

rob006

luceos IMO this should be a standard feature to have some purgatory where posts/discussions from a spammer are kept for some grace period and then deleted permanently. It does not need to be separate tag, just a separate view with soft-deleted posts/discussions list and some task to hard-delete them after X days.

Similar thing could be useful for users too - ban them, and after X days delete account completely.

GreXXL

rob006 IMO this should be a standard feature to have some purgatory where posts/discussions from a spammer are kept for some grace period and then deleted permanently. It does not need to be separate tag, just a separate view with soft-deleted posts/discussions list and some task to hard-delete them after X days.

I agree that this would be a nice feature to have. Although I do know no other Forum software that currently has implemented such a complex spam-handling as a default feature. For the benefit of the community I think a solution in FoF-Spamblock is much more realistically achievable short term. It might be a good idea to open this as a separate feature suggestion for Flarum core.

rob006 Similar thing could be useful for users too - ban them, and after X days delete account completely.

This would have to be implemented in combination with some ban list. Otherwise you would just allow people to register again and start spamming all over again - which just makes life for moderators hard.

rob006

GreXXL I agree that this would be a nice feature to have. Although I do know no other Forum software that currently has implemented such a complex spam-handling as a default feature.

AFAIK Discourse has pretty complex rules for handling deleted posts, so they could have similar thing for spammers. PhpBB had option "delete threads inactive since x days" for subforums ages ago, it was often used as purgatory for deleted stuff.

Also, it could be simplified - focus on deleting banned users without non-deleted posts after X days. And when you delete such user, you can also hard-delete all soft-deleted posts. In this way you can leverage soft-delete system to handle mistakes or complains, but you don't need to store all these spam posts forever.

GreXXL

Lurker I do not agree with you - from the intention of this extension. While what has been summarized might be some exciting feature for the "normal suspension", I think it's not what "FoF Spamblock" should do. The purpose of this extension is to minimalize the work effort to get rid of a clear spam account (registered solely for the purpose of spamming). Like here on discuss, I have to do this 3-10 times each day. Any additional click that has to be done every time is far from ideal. Hence my proposal to set this once as an admin as a default behaviour for the community. Also ensures it's handled consistently.

Lurker

GreXXL he purpose of this extension is to minimalize the work effort to get rid of a clear spam account (registered solely for the purpose of spamming).

If I understood it correctly, your position on "Spamblock" is that it should be more automated when it comes to filtering the forum -- very much like how Akismet works; where:

Regular spam is automatically hidden for admin/moderator review, and
Blatant Spam is automatically deleted without the need for admin/moderator review.

But the proposed change is:

A. Regular spam (Soft Delete)

Suspend User and Hide Post/Discussion (default setting)
Suspend User and Delete Post/Discussion
Suspend User, Hide and Change Tag of All Posts/Discussions

B. Blatant spam (Hard Delete)

Delete User and Post/Discussion

Does this summary make sense?

Disclaimer: I'm not a developer. I just wanted to understand how this new feature proposal would work so I could support it better. Sorry for the inconvenience.

GreXXL

Lurker currently, the extension "Spamblock" adds the option to mark a user as a "Spammer" within his profile. This automates indefinite (sort of) suspension as well as the soft deletion of all posts/discussions made by the user. This is the current feature set - meant to automate specific moderative actions on clear spam accounts.

I would like options within the admin panel to change the automotive actions to either:

Suspend the user indefinitely and soft delete all discussions/posts made by the user (current method)
Suspend the user indefinitely and soft delete all discussions/posts made by the user and change all discussions tags made by the user to a selectable tag of choice
Suspend the user indefinitely and hard delete all discussions/posts made by the user
Hard Delete the user and hard delete all discussions/posts made bad the user

It's not Akismet or Stop Forum Spam (so it has no own spam detection) it's just the punishment / moderative action that gets automated. Likely for those that haven't been automatically detected and blocked anyways.

Lurker

GreXXL Thanks for the explanation. Now I understand it better.

I think it would be fair to say that a percentage of those who bypass the anti-spam system of the forum are users who “unintentionally” posted a spam. And for that I reason, I prefer not to soft or hard delete “all” their posts/discussions in the forum, but only the post/discussion that contained the spam. Because they might have contributed something good in the past that would benefit the community if the post/discussion remained.

rob006

Lurker I think that in that case you should not use "mark as spammer" option, just ban user and delete problematic post manually. This extension is mostly used for bots that post only spam, so it make sense to optimize workflow for that scenario.

CyberGene

Lurker I guess you don't use the Spamblock extension. It was meant to mark a user as a complete spammer and currently it has no configuration, so by default it would suspend the user and soft-delete all its posts. As you apparently can see, this was an extension meant to combat complete spammers, i.e. newly registered spambots/users whose sole purpose is to spam and who might also get detected by the "Spam Prevention" extension which is specifically made to scrutinize first few posts of new users, and will be bypassed for regular users. With that in mind, the asked change here (that I fully agree with) is to also provide the ability to completely remove the new user (not just suspend them) and hard-delete all his posts.

What you're talking about is rather some special case of regular users who might occasionally get their posts reported or detected by some other extension (e.g. the filtering one) and you need to only soft-delete that actual post. Well, that's already the existing functionality for flagged posts.