there are many safeguards to protect against that. first off, it takes a number of individual users flagging for the post to become invisible, and even then its not gone. we will constantly review the flagged posts/comments and make sure they are legitimately being flagged. on the off chance that it becomes a problem, we have many variables to change to fix these potential problems.

it's good, but I hope it does not get abused, and a good post be removed because a joker flagged a post or comment.

go for it buddy... flag it... you should be able to flag either individual comments, or entire blogs, or whatever. If you find somewhere that i haven't appended this module to, let me know and i'll add it.

or an individual comment.

So, one could flag this thread?

-s

In Drupal, you can control what tags are allowed by going to Admin > Site Configuration > Input Formats and then selecting the input filter used by default (you'll then have to click the 'configure' tab to change the allowed tags). You can also add a 'nofollow' relationship to all links, which might help if pulling them altogether isn't desirable.
Another approach would be to beef up the captcha system on here. There are easy modules for adding simple math or letter questions to deter spam—what makes it through would then be subject to flagging.
Anyway, great job on working through improvements.

i'm so glad to hear this is looked upon as a potentially positive step. i'm with you guys and absolutely cannot stand spam on boards of any kind. its such an interruption to a conversation.

I just found this module and am not 100% sure about it's details yet, but i think if i explain how it works, that may clear up some questions.

if you find an inappropriate post (spam, flaming, abuse, bigotry, violence, etc.) you click the report abuse link and it takes you to a page with a drop down for you to select the problem (go ahead and click it if you want to see), and then fill out a short description of the problem. I'm guessing 99% of the time its just gonna be spam, and that's simple enough. anyway, once you submit it, it goes into a list that we have access to in the administration section and we can manually review the actual posts flagged, along with any message you may have sent.

From what i've seen, it does have the ability to use a threshold, so if more than x amount of people flag something, it will be removed from you guys' visibility making it effectively gone, but it will not actually be gone, it will go to the list. that provides both an effective removal solution, as well as a requirement for human eyes to look at something before it is purged (or put back onto the boards).

honestly, i'm not sure how we will have to tweak this out to make it work here. there really are a number of variables involved, the most unpredictable one being random human behavior. i hope that abuse of the abuse system doesn't occur, but if it does, we fix it.

something else i wanted to mention is that i'm personally not gonna decide what stays and goes. i mean, some stuff is really obvious like blatant commercial spam, but when it comes to judgment calls on content i'm gonna hand it over to whitewater because he's the man to make those kinds of decisions. i didn't want anybody to think that i'm stepping in and deciding whats worthy or not on this site, all i'm interested in doing is writing code and bringing the best and newest technology to the site.

and Adarga, thats not a half bad idea either. it should be possible to specify stricter html filters based on user class... but i digress, i'll look into that idea and see if it's possible or not.

BTW, thank you for your anti-spam efforts ;-)

I think it is a step in the right direction, provided that a flag doesn't do anything until a moderator investigates.

I think a better next step would be to disallow hyperlinks except for users who are actually logged in. I believe that would put the brakes on 90% of the spam here. Just my 2 cents.

opinion on that. Just would like to have the flag function clarified a bit more. Would the flag, from any person at any point in time, be instant? Or is it more of an instant message to the site admin to check a post?

What would keep anyone from just sitting and flagging everything a certain person posts? Many variations on that can be imagined.

I'd be for it if the ax was not in everyone's hands, but at least the call for an ax is easily available quickly and accurately, and used as such.

Diablo

sounds good. will it only be for spam purpose? i've posted before about the need for this type of moderation, and some people went a bit off their rockers thinking i was calling for censorship. so, before that happens, will the flagging be intended just for spam or will it also cut out people that post craiglistesque remarks?

msoghoian I don't know you, but I love you. The spamming here was one of my biggest pet peeves. Thank you for doing this.