Topic: [Newbie scrutiny instead of jail] Every new user's first post: loyce.club/patrol (Read 1094 times)
September 25, 2023, 05:44:09 AM
I was reminded of this thread, so it deserves a bump. Unfortunately, it still nows most first posts aren't worth reading.
February 07, 2023, 09:00:28 AM
I noticed that some members who aren't actually posting for the first time are showing up...
That's intentional: every user who posts shows up once, because every user can be a spammer.Quote
For example, user BitDials has over 108 activity and this post showed up in entry 11 (at time of writing):
https://loyce.club/archive/posts/6172/61722610.html
That means he hasn't posted since I created this topic, and indeed, he just woke up from October 2020.https://loyce.club/archive/posts/6172/61722610.html
Quote
It's not the first post from this user (far from it) but in the list you would not be able to tell in any way until you actually go and view the post.
Correct. I'm just surprised how many old users are still waking up to make their first post in years. February 07, 2023, 07:25:36 AM
Hey, nice tool! I've had a scroll through and I noticed that some members who aren't actually posting for the first time are showing up...so it's a little hard to distinguish brand new members from members who aren't brand new. Adding the member rank, activity and/or post count at the time of the post could help distinguish this easily without visiting each post and checking.
For example, user BitDials has over 108 activity and this post showed up in entry 11 (at time of writing):
https://loyce.club/archive/posts/6172/61722610.html
It's not the first post from this user (far from it) but in the list you would not be able to tell in any way until you actually go and view the post.
For example, user BitDials has over 108 activity and this post showed up in entry 11 (at time of writing):
https://loyce.club/archive/posts/6172/61722610.html
It's not the first post from this user (far from it) but in the list you would not be able to tell in any way until you actually go and view the post.
February 07, 2023, 06:56:42 AM
Bump into 2022! I stumbled upon this cronjob and had totally forgotten about it. It still works, but I set updates to be less frequent (every 20 minutes).
Since I started this, 185,433 users have made at least one post.
Bump Since I started this, 185,433 users have made at least one post.
June 15, 2021, 11:17:08 PM
Any idea what's going on with that? I'm thinking many of them are account farmers, but who knows. I can't think of another reason why someone would register an account and wait that long to make their first post--and when that's happening with a number of accounts, it makes me a bit suspicious.
I can think of legit reasons, such as a user who's trying to get a technical problem solved. But if I look at the 10 latest entries, I get this:Freshly joined altcoin spammer
Freshly joined Twitter spammer
2 years old account creating a 2 word topic
7 years old account posting PhoenixMiner which may or may not be malware
Fresly joined generic altcoin shitposter on a tech board
Freshly joined Telegram spammer
Freshly joined Telegram spammer, in the same topic as the previous user
Fresly joined plagiarism, creating a few topics, no doubt hoping for a quick Merit
3.5 years old account posting in Italian << This one looks like a real user, I've Merited his post.
Freshly joined account posting his username and one Portuguese word
This is more or less as I expected. Real users are the rare exception.
June 15, 2021, 06:48:36 PM
The 1000 first posts cover only one week. I would have expected most of those users to be new users, but it turns out many of them use an older account (which means they just made the first post since I started this topic 5 months ago).
I know you posted this a month ago, but I just noticed it and find it an interesting fact. Any idea what's going on with that? I'm thinking many of them are account farmers, but who knows. I can't think of another reason why someone would register an account and wait that long to make their first post--and when that's happening with a number of accounts, it makes me a bit suspicious.The best way I suggested is to provides a bot that can put human to test to be sure that an account user is not a bot but a human.
Oh, you mean like the captcha thing that the forum already has? May 16, 2021, 04:26:40 AM
The 1000 first posts cover only one week. I would have expected most of those users to be new users, but it turns out many of them use an older account (which means they just made the first post since I started this topic 5 months ago).
December 26, 2020, 09:23:40 AM
I've reduced the update frequency from once a minute to once every 5 minutes.
December 21, 2020, 04:36:07 PM
Is it possible that the scraper was trying to get a post that had been deleted in the meantime?
Only if Recent Posts showed the post without the username. 
December 21, 2020, 04:07:55 PM
This project got stuck on a post without userID. I don't know what happened there.
I only saw it after 3 days. It works again.
I only saw it after 3 days. It works again.
Is it possible that the scraper was trying to get a post that had been deleted in the meantime?
I see a deleted post in the modlog.
Quote from: /modlog.php
Delete reply: Re: Build a bitcoin app for the tonido app store and win an ipod touch ? in topic #3110 by member #2911613
December 21, 2020, 02:49:19 PM
This project got stuck on a post without userID. I don't know what happened there.
I only saw it after 3 days. It works again.
I only saw it after 3 days. It works again.
December 17, 2020, 09:02:34 PM
Objections:
- It won’t work. This is trivial for spambot authors to work around. All that a bot needs to do is to make one post which will have a high probability of passing human review from someone who is not following the thread in which the post is made. The old spammer trick of copying and pasting an earlier post in a long thread can be fully automated—as can a text spinner, to prevent catching that with a bot, too.
What I predicted, I have now observed in the wild: A spambot account starts with a few posts that look plausible when viewed out of context, with text that looks copied and pasted from somewhere.
Quote from: https://bitcointalk.org/modlog.php
- Nuke user: N/A in topic #0 by member #2900957
Quote from: https://bpip.org/Profile?p=Uffgshfb
Meta Log
| DateTime | Action | Detail |
| 12/18/2020 12:28:01 AM | Changed to Archived status | Nuke user |
Spamfighter advice: Never unfollow old threads. Context is your friend. You best know the threads in which you yourself have actively participated.
I caught this one because its second post was on an old thread that is still on my watchlist. The post was fully grammatical, and it did not contain any links (not even hidden links). Nobody would report that as spam, let alone as a spambot automated post.
Because I remembered the context of the thread, I immediately detected that the post made no sense: Its content was totally irrelevant to the subject matter of the thread. It was not related to any of the prior posts in the 13-page thread—not even as a topic-drifting side discussion! But if you were to view the post without reading the whole thread, then you would not see it as spam. It doesn’t look like spam.
Whereupon I examined the account’s post history, and I found that its first post was of the same nature: More or less grammatical, no links, sensible within its four corners, and totally irrelevant to the context of the thread. Read that post, and ask yourself if you would report it. Then, view the context and ask again.
A list for scrutinizing each account’s first post (or even its first few posts) would not catch this.
I can think of some easy ways for the spambot authors to attempt blending into the context. For obvious reasons, I don’t want to explain. Suffice it to say, an intelligent reader who has actively participated in a discussion has the best vantage point for catching any automated tricks. —Unless the spambot authors were somehow to make their bots write good, original posts that contribute to the substance of discussions! That would not be a bad outcome.
December 15, 2020, 05:33:51 AM
At least do something like this:
It's an improvement, but now the gray links can't be selected. And it still makes the posts messy.Dammit! I can display href content in the tooltip but I can't find a way to display the tooltip with pointer-events disabled.
This is currently running on loyce.club/patrol/test.html. The tooltip kinda defeats the purpose if the URL is still visible on the bottom of my browser.I won't change this (yet). A tooltip would be perfect, but I don't think anything less than that is worth messing up the posts this much when this spam is still very rare.
December 14, 2020, 03:49:29 PM
Dammit! I can display href content in the tooltip but I can't find a way to display the tooltip with pointer-events disabled. Anyway, here's CSS so maybe someone has an idea (TryNinja?). I've added CSS selectors to apply only to posts.
@TryNinja you are missing a class selector in your code. It should be
Code:
.post a.ul {
position: relative;
z-index: 2;
/* pointer-events: none; */
}
/* hide the tooltip by default */
.post a.ul:before,
.post a.ul:after {
visibility: hidden;
opacity: 0;
pointer-events: none;
}
/* place tooltip above the element */
.post a.ul:before {
position: absolute;
bottom: 150%;
left: 50%;
margin-bottom: 5px;
margin-left: -80px;
padding: 7px;
width: 200px;
-webkit-border-radius: 3px;
-moz-border-radius: 3px;
border-radius: 3px;
background-color: #000;
background-color: hsla(0, 0%, 20%, 0.9);
color: #fff;
content: attr(href);
text-align: center;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 1.2;
}
/* make tooltip look like a speech bubble */
.post a.ul:after {
position: absolute;
bottom: 150%;
left: 50%;
margin-left: -5px;
width: 0;
border-top: 5px solid #000;
border-top: 5px solid hsla(0, 0%, 20%, 0.9);
border-right: 5px solid transparent;
border-left: 5px solid transparent;
content: " ";
font-size: 0;
line-height: 0;
}
/* show tooltip on hover */
.post a.ul:hover:before,
.post a.ul:hover:after {
visibility: visible;
opacity: 1;
}
@TryNinja you are missing a class selector in your code. It should be
Code:
.post a::after {
December 14, 2020, 03:40:09 PM
Sample: https://loyce.club/patrol/test.html
This looks terrible, and I don't know enough about CSS to fix this.
It does indeed. This looks terrible, and I don't know enough about CSS to fix this.
At least do something like this:
Code:
.post a::after {
content: " [" attr(href) "]";
color: #666;
}Makes it readable and doesn't break the rest of the page.
December 14, 2020, 02:19:13 PM
I don't know about tooltips (at least not without javascript) but you can add this to CSS to display the contents of the href tag. You'll probably want to add some CSS selector in front as this applies to the entire document.
Sample: https://loyce.club/patrol/test.htmlThis looks terrible, and I don't know enough about CSS to fix this.
Just give me a second...
December 14, 2020, 02:17:23 PM
I don't know about tooltips (at least not without javascript) but you can add this to CSS to display the contents of the href tag. You'll probably want to add some CSS selector in front as this applies to the entire document.
Sample: https://loyce.club/patrol/test.htmlThis looks terrible, and I don't know enough about CSS to fix this.
December 14, 2020, 02:10:08 PM
For finding such hidden links, I usually hover the mouse cursor over the links and check them at bottom of my broswer without opening them.
I thought of that after my change too.Quote
My suggestion is to replace the links with tooltips, so that the real link is shown in a text box when you hover the mouse cursor over the disabled link.
If anyone has the CSS for this, that would be really cool I don't know about tooltips (at least not without javascript) but you can add this to CSS to display the contents of the href tag. You'll probably want to add some CSS selector in front as this applies to the entire document. Replace the square brackets with something else if you don't like them.
Code:
a::after {
content: " [" attr(href) "]";
} December 14, 2020, 01:22:45 PM
For finding such hidden links, I usually hover the mouse cursor over the links and check them at bottom of my broswer without opening them.
I thought of that after my change too.Quote
My suggestion is to replace the links with tooltips, so that the real link is shown in a text box when you hover the mouse cursor over the disabled link.
If anyone has the CSS for this, that would be really cool 
December 14, 2020, 12:33:32 PM
Suggestion: Make links within posts un-clickable.
Done!For finding such hidden links, I usually hover the mouse cursor over the links and check them at bottom of my broswer without opening them.
Despite of this, I agree with disabling links.
My suggestion is to replace the links with tooltips, so that the real link is shown in a text box when you hover the mouse cursor over the disabled link. Off course, I don't know whether it's possible or not.
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