Big fof/anti-spam improvement bounty

GreXXL

Over the past few days, I have collected all the initial feedback and ideas floating around the newly created fof/anti-spam extension. To achieve better transparency, they have been separated into separate proposals:

It would be an excellent improvement for Flarum community administrators to have better tools to defend themselves against the increasing spam. Quite a bit of development must be done to implement those features. Therefore, I am starting this bounty to make development on these new features more feasible.

rafaucau

GreXXL https://discuss.flarum.org/d/33787-integration-of-blomstraspamprevention-features-to-fofanti-spam

I get annoyed by spammers a lot, so I can create Pull Request for this: FriendsOfFlarum/anti-spam10
However, before I create PR it is worth discussing whether the solution I have proposed is acceptable.

The image illustrates a proposed configuration flow, not the design:

GreXXL

rafaucau This is an excellent idea and takes it much further than spam prevention currently does. I think spamprevention does look at users below a certain post count and checks for links containing (which catches 99% of spammers). Spamprevention currently also works with fof/userbio. Currently, the extension only puts people in the moderation queue, which I'd prefer because there will also be many false positives. I can imagine some communities will mark you directly as a spammer, but as you are then suspended with no way to appeal the suspension, I think this is a bit harsh.

IanM

rafaucau Yes, I also think this is a very good idea, and one that is sure to be of benefit to multiple Flarum communities.

I'd support this 100%, let me know if there's anything I can do from my end to help you along with this!

luceos

It feels like a lot of ideas resolve around the same principles. @askvortsov at some point tried to combine all that into a flexible framework called auto moderator.

What if we invested into auto moderator to be extensible so that it can "mark as spammer", add more metrics and metrics comparisons to do the spam tests?

Extend Events, that can (0 or more) trigger certain rulesets, like "Posting" or "User Bio Changed"
Extend Attributes, that can be used in the rulesets as "<Attribute> contains" or "<Attribute> is greater than"
Extend Comparison, that can be used in rulesets as "Post content <Comparison>" like "Post content <contains spam>"
Extend Actions, that can be used as an action on a ruleset (allowing multiple actions), for instance "Mark as spammer" or "Promote to <Group>" or "Move to Tag"
Ability to name Rulesets
Create a UX that adopts the Attributes and Comparisons

I know this is a massively different take on OP and what rafaucau posted, but I think this might be a very worthy investment. If this would become part of FoF in any way, I believe the foundation should also invest in this as it could become a cornerstone of every community.

rafaucau

It missed me that such an extension as automodarator exists. In that case, I guess there is no point in doing proposed PR (rafaucau) from scratch and it would be better to improve existing extension.
On the other hand, sometimes it is faster to create something from scratch.

What I'm proposing has a the same UX as Cloudflare's WAF and I think it's quite simple for the casual user and at the same time allows you to do a lot

Darkle

luceos Integrating automoderator with fof/anti-spam, as mentioned in the achievements proposal discussion, could really enhance both. This might make a strong case for adding automoderator to FoF (with two solid integrations). It'd be great to hear @IanM thoughts on this. Also, since Askvortsov has updated the repo with his latest work, he might have some useful tips on what to do next.

CyberGene

I’ve experienced serious problems with the AutoModerator - after I removed it, it messed all my user role assignments and I had to recreate them for all users one by one. And while using it I was not able to manually re-assign roles that are managed by it which is the main issue I see. I really hope you don’t go this way because IMO it’s a very complicated extension that may bring more issues than it solves. This is a personal opinion of course but I’ve had my fair share of headaches with it and I’m not sure if @askvortsov is available anyway, he’s been busy with other projects AFAIK.

luceos

CyberGene I think whatever issues there are, they definitely should be resolvable. As Sasha just doesn't have the time to invest in the project, moving it or a replica into FoF with proper funding would be beneficial in the long term and increase stability overall.

askvortsov

luceos CyberGene I have an in progress rewrite of automoderator should fix most of this, as it simplifies the concept significantly into a generic "when X, if Y, do Z" engine. This no longer requires a weird separation of regular groups vs automod groups. Sadly I haven't had time to work on it, as I've been busy with work and personal life. It is very high on my priorities for when I do have time.

CyberGene

askvortsov This no longer requires a weird separation of regular groups vs automod groups.

That’s awesome. Hopefully you can find some time. But personal stuff and family are the most important things, no rush here. Cheers and happy holidays!