Someone I know was banned from a forum by akismet for spamming. Though the message he had posted was flagged as spam, it wasn't. And just like that the forum lost one of their most active members. While akismet and other anti-spam plugins can help webmasters fight spam depending too much on them could prove to be costly because if forum members are arbitrarily banned any time someone posts something that looks like spam but isn't then forum members would move away to other forums. Do any of you, forum owners, automate the deletion of spam and banning of forum members? Ever got complaints from active members who were banned though they didn't deserve it?
Well, the Admins here can tell you if there is any automated spam protection here. I look for spam here everyday, all day, and eliminate it immediately upon discovery. It has been my experience that when using Akismet on my continuity sites and content sites, I have the option to hold the post for moderation prior to the post going live. I always do my spam elimination this way, I verify it before deleting it and the member.
The online games have anti-spam bots that automatically ban people. If you jump tables, hit enter too many times in a row, or do other things that spammers typically do, they target your user ID and ban you for 24 hours or so. I read where one woman got banned for 21 years. It is all automated, and there is no recourse. Yahoo will not reinstate you; you have to either just wait out the ban or get another ID to use in the meantime.
Forum and site admins need to hire/promote active users to moderators. They then can act as this "auto spammer" and block those who spam or find ways around spamming. It is much, much more efficient and effective. -DeathXGun
It seems like this automatic way of banning spammers isn't reliable at all. I think that in many forums, they have the so-called "moderators" which help keep the forum free from spam. And of course, the people on the site can report spam as well so that's a huge help. I guess to be able to know that a post is truly a spam, there have to be several reports about it. It's just to make sure that that person is really spamming and is not being reported by someone just so he can get in trouble.
