Spammers.

Can the spam posts be deleted and the threads unlocked please, or is an attack still ongoing?

Spam has been an issue all the last week. We’ll be improving spam prevention soon.

@Princess Luna  
That didnt answer my question.
 
I’m asking mainly because some threads were deleted without a trace and without any sort of notice as to why.

@Background Pony #87CD  
You were asking about spam posts and locked threads, not deleted threads. Threads are usually deleted when they shouldn’t exist to begin with (usually because of baiting), which is usually unrelated to spam.

@Princess Luna  
If threads can be deleted, so can posts, is what i’m getting at.
 
Am i to take that as the reason the aforementioned threads were deleted then, they were considered “Bait”?  
I posted screenshots here.  
https://derpibooru.org/forums/meta/topics/what-freedom-of-expression-means-to-those-of-us-who-support-it?post_id=4881407#post_4881407

@Background Pony #87CD  
It’s an easy way to shut down discussions with questions too hard to answer, so the ol’ spam excuse is what they run with.

@aperture_tech  
So, on a thread with more pages of spam than pages of actual content, like, 6 pages of spam on a thread with q0 pages, ignoring how many posts were deleted so that we can’t even see them, you think locking the thread because of a spam attack was … what? Some sort of black flag operation?

@Background Pony #671B  
Meant to say “10 pages” but spellcheck helped.

@aperture_tech  
I’d rather not make accusations without proof, but I do find it suspicious that only two threads were hit by it, and that they still haven’t been cleared of spam and reopened.

@Background Pony #671B  
I’m not implying the mods did it, but it sure makes it easier to not have to answer the hard questions when a spammer is at work and they can just lock the thread rather than banning the spammer.

@aperture_tech  
Almost sounds like the spammer was being used like a tool.  
Just spitting out ideas here, pure hypothetical.

@aperture_tech  
Ban evasion is a thing that can actually happen, as you should be well aware; constantly playing whack-a-mole with spammers while they destroy any shred of discussion isn’t exactly fruitful. Also, hardly anything is going on moderation-wise right now, so it’s not exactly critical to reopen the thread.

@Princess Luna  
So if a spammer wants discussion interrupted and spams with intent of breaking communication which is what spam does, your response is to interrupt the discussion so that the spam stops?  
Well, that certainly works.

@Background Pony #C25C  
If it’s the middle of the day and there’s only a couple people here and someone spams 1 message a second resulting dozens of pages worth of spam across multiple IPs then yes, locking the thread helps deal with them.

@Background Pony #C25C  
“We blew up the building so now the hostage takers have no hostages.”

@Background Pony #609B  
More like we temporarily locked the threads the spammer fixated on to temporarily deal with the situation until the aforementioned improved spam prevention comes online.
 
I assure you, none of the people using those threads normally were banned, which I am guessing would be your equivalent of “murdered hostages”.

@Derpy Whooves  
The hostage would be “the thing at stake”. Since the people in the thread were attempting discussion, and the rule against spam exists specifically to maintain discussion, and the purpose of spam is to interrupt discussion, the discussion is the valuable thing you were meant to rescue in this scenario.
 
“We literally couldn’t” is a pretty good excuse, but the point remains that you officially did what the spammer most probably wanted to do himself.
 
And before you again insist that “there was no discussion happening” I’ll have you know I personally typed out a long post answering the question in the thread topic and it was thrown into the void when I attempted to send it. So yes, there was discussion that was successfully interrupted and I am a bit bootymad about it.

Well some ban evaders are indeed hard to deal with so locking down the thread and at the same time making some improvements to spam prevention is not a bad thing.
 
Also it is nice to get some time away from the constant discussion.

@Background Pony #C25C  
That’s “general you” as applied to “whichever staff” and not “you the person I am talking to” in case the confusion causes any anger.

@Background Pony #C25C  
Actually the spammer posted about 2 pages worth of wall of text manifestos about Lebanon and Israel first.
 
So, they weren’t spamming the thread because of any discussion related to this site, they were spamming because their manifestos got deleted and they were banned. And when their spams got deleted they spammed and ban evaded harder. And when we locked the threads they were spamming they kept moving to new threads.
 
We used to be able to ‘discourage’ people who spammed like this, and it tended to slow them down enough that we could handle their abuse of the site. That’s gone.
 
In the future we’ll have other tools for handling spam.
 
Sorry your reply got caught in the fracas(es). But given the tools and the speed at which the spam was growing, locking the threads interrupted the spammer enough to deal with them. If they back off and we see they aren’t still trying to do it, then maybe those threads might get unlocked.
 
@Background Pony #C25C  
No, it was me. For the first half of the attack I was the only person working on them. More people showed up, and that helped. But when someone is posting one spam a second in multiple threads, deleting them at a rate of 3 a minute is a losing battle.

@Derpy Whooves  

 
This is entirely counter to the justifications we were sold so far.  
I think I’ll go back to just fucking off. I think I can manage that.

@Background Pony #C25C  
wot
 
How is what @Princess Luna said and what I said in any way ‘counter’?

@Derpy Whooves  

 
 
I hope that the “other tools” to fight the spam will be less controversial than the “old way” to “discourage” people.

Yeah, now the locks are temporary. Just tell the truth, they would not have been unlocked if people didn’t call it out.