4 ms·

Ask HN: closed million+ monthly forum coz of spammers, now what?

• Mc_Big_G 17y ago
  I'll take it! :) I don't know why you would shut something down that has a decent rank. When you run a forum, you have to moderate. Spammers can be reduced by requiring a captcha and/or a question they have to answer (What is 3 + 4?). If they get through, you have to delete them. The absolute best way to handle this is to manually approve each user that signs up and/or ban users with email addresses from certain domains. (Like ones that end in .ru, sorry Russia). You will learn very fast, just by looking at the email address which ones are valid users. I've been doing it for years and only had a few spammers get through. With regards to users causing problems, it's your forum. Make everyone aware of your policies and then delete anyone who repeatedly breaks them. Yeah, they'll just sign up again, but they'll get tired of that and just go away at some point. You could always ban their IP too. You have to be careful since you can affect other users that way, but it can work well enough. Why don't you want to reopen it? What else could you expect to do with it? I'm not sure what you are really asking.
  • petervandijck 17y ago
    I should have been clearer: spam wasn't the problem, it was abusive users, including abuse against our members on other websites (which is very hard to manage). I won't reopen because I don't think I can reduce the abuse, and I won't run a forum that causes this kind of abuse. I guess my question is pretty vague, just hoping that perhaps someone has a good idea of what to do next, apart from just keeping the site closed with archives up...? Maybe that's all there is to do..
• bgnm2000 17y ago
  I had a forum which was literally 90% spammers (I didn't even realize it - I had built the site, never actually launched it - then a few years visited to find hundreds of thousands of posts, which seemed to all be bots.) the traffic was insane though. That said I figured I could just sell the domain on sedo.com. So I listed it, and even though it didn't get any bids, it did make money through their landing page program.
• petervandijck 17y ago
  I won't re-open it because it's too much hassle in my life. I could probably sell it, although I am attached to it (been running it for 10 years!). Not sure if it'd be worth it..
• imp 17y ago
  Your post in the forums doesn't really mention spammers, but abusive users: "PBH has run for over 10 years as a great place to get and share information about Colombia. Unfortunately, during the last few years, there has been a (very) small minority of people who thought it was ok to personally attack, threaten and harass, both on phb, on other websites and in real life, other members that they disagree with. You know who you are. " It sounds like a different problem than just throwing up a captcha. Have you banned the users/IPs of the offending people? Can't you just add a "report user" button by each post and then have users or IPs with X number of reports automatically banned?
  • petervandijck 17y ago
    Tried all of the above. We can control abuse on our own site, but once removed from the site, these people would start abuse on other sites (against our members). It went way too far.
    • imp 17y ago
      Closing permanently seems like an extreme thing to do. If you've done all that you can do, then I don't see why you would feel bad about abuse on sites that you can't control. Another slightly less extreme option could be to start over clean. Delete all user accounts and ban any IPs from users who have ever accessed your site from creating a new account. That way you don't have to close it down permanently. Overall, I'm getting the impression that you feel personally guilty and responsible for the abuse against your users on other sites and are looking for validation from HN that it's okay to shut it down and move on. Maybe you should freeze new accounts and freeze forum posting for a month and see if you feel differently after some time has passed. That would also give your users time to cool off. If it's time-consuming to run the site, then tell your users that you need a few select people to step up and act as moderators, otherwise the community will be shut down. If no one cares enough to moderate, then go ahead and shut it down. If they do care enough to moderate then write some basic tools to give them control to monitor abusive behavior.
      • petervandijck 17y ago
• evancaine 17y ago
  I'd keep the archives open on your site. An archive that large and that old will continue to drive traffic (and ad revenue..?) for some time to come. This should preserve your page rank a little longer than just letting the site die and it gives you time to consider your options. You could find someone interested in running the site where you retain ownership but share profits from advertising. Or you could outsource moderation. As others have suggested, re-establish the rules, then look for a freelancer to moderate the forum for you. If you've put 10+ years of your life into this it would be a shame to let it die. Sometimes that's the right choice but why not wait a few weeks/months and be certain if that's what you choose to do.
  • petervandijck 17y ago
    Yes, keeping archives open. It's a shame, really, especially because I had hopes for the potential of that site.
• csomar 17y ago
  So you don't want to re-open it? and also you have a 1 million page view/month forum? (I estimate the unique visitors to 500K). My Question is: Are you ready to open another one? If yes, you already have the server that handle such traffic and the traffic that will boost your forum. Put up a new forum, make an ad, or something that attract the organic traffic to your new forum and fire up new discussion with a new community. I'm just giving arbitrary numbers: Let say you have 500K unique per month, only 10% follow your ad -> 50K unique, only 10% register and become active member -> 5K, in one year that's already 60K. If 1/6 is active daily, you forum will get around 50K post per day, that's in one year :D Good luck!
• AdeN 17y ago
  Peter, as a daily user of your site, (PBH), for over 5 years, I cannot understand this unannounced decision. The site is an unexplained winner, a freak, or in other words; you struck lucky. The whole thing has been a glorious mix of debate, idiocy, playground banter, wit and solid information for a long time. In my view, you could have solved the obvious problems by simply having delayed registration, anonymous moderation, deleting rogue users' IP addresses, offensive comments and threads without explanation. But I know nothing of these things and I pretty much stopped posting some time ago because I realised I ended up much happier not doing so. Many saw the site as a democracy when that should/was not the case. You have allowed this to become personal, and the trolls fed on that and in a way, (many ways), made it a success; the whole host of satellite sites you allude to was sparked by your suggestion. I agree, they are nasty, dysfunctional, needy people the likes of whom you should have never bothered yourself. Their efforts will now flourish, (briefly), an essential tool and meeting-place for many will disappear. You will have gained nothing and the response from the peanut gallery on going back would be terrible, I suppose ;-) I fail to see how just throwing it all away solves things, or is it a posture? I would gladly buy it off you if I knew how to run it, technically. Tambien estoy en Colombia y te mando un abrazo, amigo...gracias Alma del Norte