OpenStreetMap
It was said in a previous “diary” entry that OSM users are not a major issue “because nobody will actually see a user page for a user that doesn’t do anything unless they actually go hunting for it for some reason” (from here).
But this is an example of spam user :
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Voyancegratuiteimmediate
which is referenced multiple times from Facebook or Twitter (e.g. https://twitter.com/DabiaRamani)
The aim is probably to increase G. ranking. The same site is referenced in dozen different sites with the same kind of weakness. If it’s not harming OSM, this miethod is artificially increasing the amount of registred users and will probably increase in the future if we do nothing.
Discussion
Comment from TomH on 10 March 2014 at 12:14
Sure, that’s the aim - it doesn’t work because we add
rel=nofollowto all the links… I’m sure twitter and facebook are full of them, which just proves they haven’t solved the problem anymore that we have, despite having vastly more resources.I have no objection to doing something, and if somebody wants to write code to support a reporting system and a moderation queue then I’m not going to object. I’m just not going to do it myself right now, because the pain this is causing me currently is not sufficient to entice me to spend time doing that. That’s how open source works.
Comment from Pieren on 10 March 2014 at 13:22
Do we really need a new reporting system ? we could reuse the trac tool with a special category “spam”
Comment from mcld on 10 March 2014 at 18:38
Pieren, the usability is important if it’s going to actually help with a deluge of posts rather than a small number of them. The trac tool is no use for the purpose you describe - no-one except a handful of power-users would ever report stuff, certainly not often. A person browsing the OSM website needs a “Report spam” button available on the user page / diary page / etc.
Tom seems to have summarised things well. I hope that before spam becomes a mega-problem, someone might like to have a go at implementing spam-flagging simply and smoothly. Hey maybe I’ll even think about it myself ;)
Comment from Pieren on 11 March 2014 at 10:46
Reporting something on trac doesn’t required power-users expertise. Between some hypothetical “easy reporting in one-click tool” and nothing, the “trac” tool already exists and the process of using it could be set-up quickly.