Telligent's system folds moderation and spam traffic into the abuse workflow. This workflow is: moderation -> reported -> appealed -> reviewed, hidden, or removed. This combination was undertaken to:
- Preemptively moderate content and comments.
- Detect spam when the content is posted.
- Review and/or remove abusive content after it has been published.
Questionable content enters the workflow at the moderation stage (see above).That is to say, the content might not meet moderation criteria, but nor has it been reported. (If it is or has been reported as spammy or abusive, it then enters the abuse workflow at the report stage - see above.) For more information about the workflow, please see How does moderation and abuse work?.
In addition to content spam, users themselves can be marked as spammy. (Moderators can do this in the moderation UI and other users can do this on the user’s profile.) When a user is suspected of being abusive, no change is made to the user - they are still able to log in and post. However, a rule ensures that their content is automatically flagged as abusive. The user can appeal their abusive status at any time. If they don't appeal, or if their appeal is denied, the user account is deleted when they are confirmed as being abusive. There is an option to completely remove their content as the abusive member's account is deleted.
Plugins have replaced the old spam rules and are used to deal with abuse (including spam). These plugins allow you to specify what content types should be excluded from checks. The plugins are:
- Email address counts - Detects abuse/spam by reviewing the content for excessive email addresses.
- Forbidden word counts - Detects abuse/spam by reviewing the content for excessive use of forbidden words.
- Link counts - Detects abuse/spam by reviewing the content for excessive links.
- Posting frequency by authenticated users - Detects abuse/spam by reviewing posting frequency by users over a specific period of time.
- Posting frequency by IP address - Detects abuse/spam by reviewing posting frequency by IP address over a specific duration of time.
- Abusive user detection by abuse frequency - Identifies users as abusive based on the frequency that their content is identified as abusive.
- Abusive user's content is abusive - When a user is identified as abusive, flag all new content by that author as abusive.
- Akismet - Detects abuse/spam by sending details about new content to the Akismet service for SPAM review.
- Authenticated user content posting frequency - Detects abuse/spam by reviewing similar content posted by an authenticated user within a specific duration of time.
- Moderate content by moderated users - Automatically moderates content created by moderated users.
Most abuse-type plugins have tabs to let you exclude specific types of content from review. Due to the fact that spam has entered the abuse workflow and is controlled by plugins, any spam references have been removed from communityserver.config.
You can further prevent spam from showing on your site by manipulating moderation options. These settings provide thresholds and time windows that govern the points at which important actions occur. Please note that here, you're not just affecting spam but all abusive content. These settings are located in Administration > Moderation > Moderation options.
- Possibly abusive threshold - The abuse reporting threshold required for the content to be able to enter abuse process.
- Definitely abusive threshold - The number of reports required for a piece of content to enter the appeal process.
- Appeal time window - the outside time it takes for an appeal to expire.
- Moderate time window - The number of days the content is moderated before it is's flagged to be expunged.
- Expunge time window - The time it takes after an appeal or moderation request expires before the content is deleted.
- Exempt authors from abuse automation minimum reputation percentile - When set to a value greater than zero, authors at or better than the configured percentile will be exempt from automated abuse.
Lastly, you can prevent spam by using IP blocking. To do so, see Blacklist an IP address or range from the community.