Killing DZone Spam Faster and Easier Than Ever!
As DZone becomes more popular with users, it also becomes more popular with spammers! This past week Matt and I worked on several new tools to help manage the ever-increasing flood of spam that DZone attracts. I think we achieved a breakthrough on a key issue.
It used to be the case that all new links were visible to all users, and we relied on spam detection and vigilant moderators to remove spam quickly. This put a ton of pressure on our excellent moderator team, however, since it required constant scrutiny of to keep the new links queue clean. As the rate of spam submissions increased, so did the probability that some of that spam would be sitting in the top of the new links queue for a while (and also in the new links RSS feed, even worse!) Far too often, this spam would pollute the new links queue.
Now, we have come up with a way to segregate nearly 100% of that spam into an active moderation queue BEFORE it ever reaches the eyes of the general DZone audience. The difference is remarkable, and you may have noticed that DZone’s new links queue is a lot cleaner and more interesting now. (Well, I guess the spam links to “Asian Sex Vacations” and “Top 10 Recipes for Healthy Desserts” were colorful in some respect, but not interesting to DZone readers!)
Since we deployed the changes a week ago, over 1000 links have been blocked outright, and none of them ever got in front of our readers. Additionally, we have new tools for the moderators to manage the active moderation very conveniently. In short, it has never been so easy to spot and kill spam. It’s almost unfair, like shooting fish in a barrel, but somehow I doubt very many of you will argue that we should be more lenient or merciful to spammers!
If you’d like to be part of the DZone moderator team, just get in touch with me at rick@dzone.com, and I’ll be happy to consider you for the role. It’s easy and fun. You’d be surprised how satisfying it feels to block these junk links and ban the vermin who submit them!
Rick Ross
Great stuff! Now we can read the good stuff.
How?
Thanks in advance
Much nicer, thanks. It had gotten bad on the weekends when the moderators where offline.
I would be weary of sharing the filtering methods if they are not hack proof. Most spam filtering techniques only buys time until spammers figure out the filtering technique.
DZone is my #1 (and only) source for programming trends/news. Since I became a manager (and now only program for fun), DZone has become my window into to development world. The fact that Java and .NET people can live together is a great testament to the community.
Thanks for your kind words and insight, Kris. I’m really glad DZone delivers what you’re looking for, and we couldn’t agree more on the importance of non-partisan developer knowledge sharing.
There’s little doubt that spammers will evolve and adapt quickly to circumvent all attempts to stop them. Thank goodness there are some long-term patterns in how they behave that help DZone’s moderators spot and handle them before they aggravate everyone else. The good news is that our strategy is almost ridiculously low-tech, and it’s simple enough that it will be hard to get around
I personally feel that the most significant change here is that the junk will no longer flood the New Links RSS feed. Since we actively block 150-200 spam links (plus countless that are prevented by bans and blacklists) this means that the RSS feed will run a LOT cleaner!
I hope it makes it more fun and worthwhile to participate in voting on New Links, which is the most important thing anyone can do to help make the DZone system work well.
Wish you all the best. This is a never ending story. But, meanwhile we have tools that make it easier not to loose much time with it.
Perfect!