Background: iSoaker has lots of mods in case a spam attack or the such occurs. If no mods were online and a spammer popped up = very bad. This system proved its worth with the spammer PIRATE 7 [I was the only one online, and was able to stop him early].

Instead of having lots of mods, what if we gave a handful of very responsible and trustworthy individuals the power to ban, so if the admins/mods aren't on, but a spammer came on, they could prevent an attack? Not all that realistic, unless you were there for Pirate 7's little spree. This would be more of an issue if we had more members, but we will in the future. This would be like arming civilians [think Texas]. Armed civilians = less crime.

Maybe this should be so, but it could too easily be abused in something like a flame war, I think that there should be a button to send out an email to all mods and admins suggestiong the ban of someone. And on this topic, in our bill of rights why don't we get the right to own and bear soakers? :P

EDIT: Now that I think about it this could be a very good idea, but only very few people should get it.

Great idea Hunter, but the Report a post feature has been here as long as SoakerMedia was around. Barely anyone uses it. Next time you see a bad post, use this button:

As much as I fear a spammer, it;s unlikely any will visit SM. If they do, I would rather clean up the results later than risk someone abusing the power to ban. On a side note: There are no active members at Soaker Media who I think would abuse the power to ban. I am proud to say I think we have some of the best members on the net.

More moderators are not needed. We are not big enough yet to have to worry so much about spammers. This issue probably will be brought up again next year, I would wait untill then to handle it. B)

I agree with everyone here so far, which just shows even more that we can all get along and don't really need any more moderators.

The active soakermedia users are only a "handful" so that probably won't help very much... I think some should have the ability to ban temporarily. You could have it set up so that a trustworthy user could temporarily ban another user, simultaniously sending an automatic email notification to the mods/admins who would decide if the "accused" should be banned.

I voted undecided because I don't know what category my opinion would fall under...

Anyway I think that a few users should be able to put a member on a temporary read-only status and have their posts hidden , but only when a moderator/admin is not on at the time. Then when the moderator/admin returns they can read the messages and decide to make it permanent or not.

Also we don't have many people coming just to spam, so we may need to htink about it now.

I myself voted undecided. This would only be a backup system, since only the power to ban would be given, nothing more. This might be more appropriate at some later date.

Agreed.

I voted for leaving the ban power to the admins and mods. It's not as if this was the most frequented forum on the web, and I believe frequent checks on the forum are made by one or other of the admins and mods.

If such a problem develops, we could consider putting all new members on moderator preview - I believe IPB has such a capability.

Since the most votes went to keeping banning a mod/admin power, no other action will be taken. If this issue pops up in the future, it will be dealt with then. And IPB does have member preview, so that is an option. B)

I know this is a very late post, but I had to make a comment. Aren't we getting too serious about this? When was the last time a spam war broke out? When it comes to politics I HATE big government, and government control. The same applies to pretty much any other authoritative institute. Seriously, why do we need to worry about all this power crap. We are a watergun board for crying out loud. Bill of Rights? Don't you guys think you're taking this a little too seriously? I know what you're thinking, spamming and bad posts bring down the board. They can easily be cleaned up, and yes, I agree spammers should be banned; but it was politics and questions of power that brought Aquatica down, not spam. Think on that one for a while.

This topic brings tears of laughter to my eyes. I was so off my rocker last November wasn't I? Spammers? Why worry about them? When would there ever be a situation where there was a spammer and no one with power online to check his damage? It was simply fabulous removing over 70 freakin spam posts today. And you know why he got away with so many? Cause no administration was here when it happened, only regular members without the power to stop it! :rolleyes:

People in general hate being prepared for disasters, that is until they happen. Suddenly there's a huge turn-around in opinion. See how I've learned from history and virtually no one else has yet? I was thinking about something like this last November, one of the most unprobable events to occur at such an isolated corner of soaking. I wanted to be prepared then, so none of this would have happened.

When all of those posts were being made, I was thinking "Where is Dux? If only I could ban those profiles." I'm not the best with computers though, so I would probably make a poor moderator. If it is simpler than I think it is though, could I be a mod?

As long as you don't touch cool-looking buttons that say stuff like "purchase ad removal" , "Edit the CSS" , "unsuspend member Jihad" etc. :P

It's actually fairly simple. In the mod cp, there is the option to move/delete/whatever large amounts of topics at a time simply by checking boxes next to the topics in question. Moving them is also simple, drop down menus ask where you want to move them to and whether or not to leave a marking post in the forum it was in originally. Spam topics are moved to a *certain special location* rather than actually deleted. Individual spam posts may be deleted though.

If you need help, feel free to ask. B)

Way cool, this is the first time I've ever been a moderator before. Well, since those things you said to not do are blindingly obvious when it comes to things I shouldn't do, I don't think I will have any problems. Thanks for making me a moderator. B)

Congrats! I was trying to IM Dux at that time that he wasn't on to grab his attention and he became un-away just as I was typing. :P

Double post to get Dux to read this (sorry about posting so soon).

I'm thinking maybe the members who have been here for a few months (the ones who obviously aren't spammers) should have the power to suspend members. Someone could have stopped those spammers much earlier if that was possible. Is there anything that doesn't have as much power as a mod and can only suspend members for 24 hours or something?

I got a PM a few minutes ago. Anyone know that SM member? : Jihad . That dude send me porn for no reason over PM. Aparently he already did 31 posts on SM, somewhat unusal for a spammer. Anyways, let the banning begin.

I'll see what I can do, but I don't think it is possible to split mod powers in that manner. I think I can however select which mod powers to allow/deny, so I could make a second mod group with just the certain powers.

I suspended Jihad until August 24th, 2033. :rolleyes:

So here's a test, "1st Citizens" have mod powers, although those to pay attention to are moving topics, closing topics, and suspending users. When there's a spammer, 9999 days is the best option. There are plenty of checks on mod power here, such as the admin logs and other tools in the admin CP. Plus, only root admins can change their own member details, so I'm not worried. :P Either way, you know what is expected at SM in terms of how power is used.

I'm pretty sure that you can seperate full mod powers from a few mod powers using invision power boards. Also- should we do a re-vote on this issue? I think that many people might have changed their opinion now.

:D That should be long enough...

You can separate certain powers, but not the ones in question. Oh well. Doesn't really matter, as power at SM is very much different than power elsewhere. I don't think a re-vote would matter all that much since it has been made clear that the old way doesn't work when it comes to random spam attacks. Say if I were to *hypothetically* go on a long-distance bike ride for the rest of the afternoon, and say if Nibordude happened to be away for most of this week, the board would be totally helpless for heck knows how long. :o

Two questions:

1) What time did the attack occur?

2) What mod powers were you looking to separate?

~8:56 to ~9:32 PM.

I wanted to separate out the powers to suspend, move topics, and close topics from all the rest.

Just checked the IPB settings...you should be able to do that by adding another mask (e.g. 2nd Citizens) and setting that mask to, among your other requirements, use the Warn system (which will allow them to suspend users).

NerfHaven style. ;)

Uh... so why are most people's names dark blue? What happened to the green?

In a weird way, getting a spam attack is sadly just a sign that these forums have grown and are attracting more people (though some that don't deserve to be here).

That said, the forum Admins need to be a little careful who they give banning powers to in order to avoid abuse. Otherwise, it is definitely a good idea to have a few who have the power just in case of such stupid spam attacks.

B)

Man, that is bad. :(

Yeah, if there is a way to move spam posts to a mod/admin viewable only forum then that might help. A member shouldn't reall be given banning powers unless they are really trusted, but a simple "move until further notice" should be fine for most members.

I trust those with dark blue enough to have them in on the experiment. If it seems excessive after a while, changes will be made. Besides, admins can undo any other actions here and only they can change their own member details [just in case you get any funny ideas] :P If I didn't trust the certain people, they wouldn't have their names in bold. And it's also probably temporary, since this problem should go away.

There is such a forum for spam topics. Every large forum has had one and a good thing is ours was pretty empty for over a year. B) Not counting this week.