Administrator/Moderator Assistance

[Rex Bouwense]

This is probably the wrong place to post this but here goes. The amount of spam that has been posted on these forums has increased to a point that the new posts are out numbered by the spam. Perhaps no one else cares but I have been reporting the posts with no obvious results. I am not sure who is responsible for keeping order here but they need to put a little more effort into eliminating the spam. I do understand that everyone here is a volunteer and most have real jobs so they can put food on the table. Perhaps I am asking too much for a forum to be a place where one can get answers to questions without the hassle of spammers cluttering up the place especially since there are so few of us who are active on the forum. Enough of my ranting.

[gymka]

+1
i wanted to write to moderators about same, but first 3 moderators which i see(in sticky threads, i don't have time to search for moderators in all forum) long time no see:)
amjjawad last time seen two weeks ago; PCMan in november of 2010; Medical-Wei in december of 2011;

[Rex Bouwense]

Well, we cannot do it ourselves. When I report a post and ask to be notified nothing happens. It is frustrating, but I guess without their assistance (Admin or Mod) we will just have to plug away.

[rokytnji]

I know that amjjawad has personal problems with family illness in another town. That is why he is icognito for a bit.
I mod at a few forums and am a Linux team member on a couple of distros. So I know how quality folks can be spread
thin when it comes to Linux.

So don't get too frustrated. I think amjjawad is the only active mod here. I say that because he asked if I would be
a mod here. I had to turn it down because I have my own motorcycle business and also try and support open source
at the same time. Only 24 hours in a day for me.

I know amjjawad is spread pretty thin also being a Lubuntu team member, a Lubuntu guide at Ubuntu forums, and a mod here also. So I can relate.

Edit: Being a moderator myself at EEEPC forums, AntiX forums, and Smartest Computing. I can tell you it can take all day
on a site like this one to go through all the threads and posts and ban spammers and delete threads and hunt and peck for posts to delete also on a forum site like this. So, pretty hard to handle for just one person also. I like how we have AntiX forum set up where a member has to be approved first before joining and having their account activated before they can start a thread.
I am able to go here
http://www.stopforumspam.com/search
and run a check on IP and email address and find out early if they are a known spambot.
Spambots are getting bad this year on all forum sites. So the work load has gotten heavier.

[Rex Bouwense]

I am aware of amjjawad's situation. I was not aware that he was the only mod. I guess I just needed to blow off some frustration.
Hey, we were in Pecos this Spring. I guess I should have looked a little closer at the location. Have a smiley .

[seppalta]

This forum seems to be the worst for spam. Who is in charge and how are moderators chosen? Rex and I and others pass by here enough that we could at least remove a lot of the spam if we had the power. I do not know how much moderating I care to do but I would love to be able to KILL spam. Biff, king of WattOS forum, farms out spam killing to some regular users and the Watt Forum stays clean relative to this one.

[goulo]

Agreed, the spam is getting overwhelming here. Besides the obvious problem of increased noise making it harder to find useful info, it also seems bad PR for attracting new people to LXDE. A forum full of spam creates the impression of a neglected/dead project. :/

Perhaps at least the process of creating a new account could be made harder for spammers, e.g. I have seen captchas which require you to execute some calculation command at a Linux shell and type its result - that would at least easily weed out non-Linux users. Or put in some random questions whose answers are in the LXDE FAQ. Something to discourage trivially easy registration by spammers.

Perhaps also if a post receives a certain number of flags as spam it could be automatically deleted, or moved to a not-publicly visible place for possible later review by moderators.

[Rex Bouwense]

Not sure what can be done by us ordinary users but continue to mark the posts as SPAM. With only one Mod, who is spread very thin, little more can be done except keep plugging. I hope you stick around to provide us with some help. Without some folks who are willing to step forward and become mods for one or more of the child forums, it might be a losing battle but at least we can slow down the slide. Welcome goulo.

[amjjawad]

Phew, I must say that Real Life Issues from the begging of this year until this very moment indeed were much stronger than my Linux Will to stay close and help here ... I'm sorry but I'm sure ALL of you will understand my situation, not to mention I'm the only Moderator who used to login to this Forum. Why? that is something I have NO control over because everyone has his/her own personal life as all of you know

So, long story short, LXDE Forum got TWO NEW Moderators, and YES, those with the shiny green name

Please, welcome our new Moderators:

Rex Bouwense
and
seppalta

And by the way, I got promoted to a Site Admin with more access, that is how we got two new Moderators

My good friend rokytnji,
My offer still valid in case you would like to help but I know you are busy, etc so I will not push

Everyone else, you need to be active in case you want to step up

IMHO, total of 6 Active Moderators will be great. This Forum has LESS traffic than, say Ubuntu Forum so we don't need to 50 Moderators, that is for sure.

Let's see how things will go from here and then we can decide
I'm sure Rex adn seppalta will do a great job, that is for sure.

Thank you!

[seppalta]

Please, welcome our new Moderators: Rex Bouwense and seppalta

Once again 'the squeeky wheels got the grease', or is it 'the barking dogs get harnessed'?

Seriously, we have tried to clean-up the site, and we hope it wasn't for no avail. Please participate with your questions and comments regarding LXDE and LXDE-related matters. It is really your site and you can feel assured that from here-on we are going to keep up with the spammers, and you will not have to worry about wading through a bunch of crap to find what you want. You can help as well, just drop Rex, I, or any moderator a simple email stipulating the category anything suspicious shows. We will put the hounds on it and, if confirmed as span, the post will be removed and the perpetrator will be banned for life. On the opposite side, don't worry about your well-intended posts. We will operate under the premise that there is no such thing as a stupid question or answer. If you have a question or well-intended answer, it is not spam.

There are an amazing number of Linux distributions that offer the LXDE desktop. Some, like WattOS, only offer an LXDE desktop, and others offer a full array of desktops. However, because of the independent nature of its components, LXDE can be easily installed on just about any distribution and can be then chosen as the default. Therefore, it only stands to reason that the LXDE Forum has the special role of an umbrella forum covering many different distributions. This is "the place" where all 'lxdeers' can mingle, share and enjoy.