Thank you, Mods

**Jerry** · 24th February 10, 05:32 AM

As I usually do when I notice a regular hasn't posted in a while, I went to the 'member's list after seeing NorCal Piper's thread about Ham's absence. I couldn't help but notice, on the page where Ham is listed, there were several guys banned as sspammers. Out of curiosity, I started randomly checking out the different pages in the thousand or so contained. I saw a hundred or more people banned as spammers in the few pages I checked. It appears the the forum has been ubder constant attack by a group of spammers, for the last year or so. Yet we have seen nothing of this in the main forum. It appears that our mods have been doing a great job keeping these people at bay. I have no idea how they find time to, in most cases, hold a full time job, keep the attackers out and keep we rabble in line. I see now why Jamie was somewhat worn out. Thank you mods for doing an excellent job

**Jock Scot** · 24th February 10, 06:10 AM

Thank you for pointing that out and I have to confess that I have no idea what is happening behind the scenes. So yes absolutely, thank you Mods, past and present.

**Tartan Hiker** · 24th February 10, 08:17 AM

Awww, shucks. T'aint nuthin.

**ThistleDown** · 24th February 10, 08:37 AM

Originally Posted by Tartan Hiker

Awww, shucks. T'aint nuthin.

'Tis so. Thanks. And thanks to you, too, Jerry.

**KFCarter** · 24th February 10, 08:25 AM

Wow... thanks for this post. Well done mods!!

I had no idea...

**MrShoe** · 24th February 10, 09:02 AM

Good on ya, mates.

Not a fun job. Glad there are those like you that are willing to step up and do it.

**cessna152towser** · 24th February 10, 09:07 AM

Good post, thank you Jerry for pointing this out to us. A reminder that our Mods past and present gave/give freely of their time to make this a top rank family friendly forum.
Guid oan ya Mods past and present!

**Steve Ashton** · 24th February 10, 10:47 AM

Perhaps I should give a little background and reasoning for why, all of a sudden, the members list is showing the spammers.

When I took over the ownership of this forum, one of my stated goals was to make how this forum is run a bit more transparent to our members.
I began by changing how decisions by our moderators were reached and then how those decisions were announced to our membership.

We are moving towards what I call "Complaint Driven Moderation". This means that we will rely on you, the general membership, to govern yourselves. It will be you who decide what is, or is not, appropriate posting on our forum.
You are adults, and we will rely on you to act like adults. Adults don't have to be forced into following our rules. Adults have developed a sense of right and wrong and follow rules because it is the right thing to do.
Our rules have undergone a major re-write by the Forum Moderators and myself and we will soon announce that they will be posted along with a change in the forum presentation and look.

But our Moderators have the responsibility to remove from the open forum any case of blatant pornography, profanity, attacks towards another member or any case of Spam they find on the forum.

I also set up the software so any new person registering to the forum goes first into a moderation queue to give the moderators an opportunity to look at the new registration and pass it through lists of known spammers that are maintained on the web.

If it is found that a new registration is indeed a known spammer the Moderators can immediately ban that person from our forum.

If you look closely you will notice that along with the notation "Banned as a known spammer" there is also a notation "Membership Revoked". This is the category for those people who are not spammers, who have been members, but for some reason refuse to abide by our rules.

Last week I modified the membership list to show all registration regardless of the number of posts they have made. I did this so I could go through the entire list passing each and every person through the lists of known spammers which are published on the web. As I find spammers who have been lurking in the background of our forum, sometimes for years, I am banning them and leaving behind the notation of why I have done so.

Once I have had an opportunity to go through the members list I will return it to showing only members in good standing.

We have had to do this because for the past seven years the membership of this forum was not being monitored and spammers were getting in.
If you would like to look through the members list and look at some of those who have never made a post you will find hundreds of cases of porn sites, hate group sites, bulk mailings, and other cases of spam that are there, undetected and not dealt with.

If you see a case of a member who is listed as "Banned as a spammer" you will know that I have confirmed that they are a known spammer and dealt with them.
Please be patient, this process will take a while. As soon as I am done I will return our forum to a look that will not bother our members with the ugly facts that we, as the worlds largest and most active forum on the subject of kits, attract hundreds of people who will attempt to use our membership lists for their own purposes.

**KFCarter** · 24th February 10, 11:18 AM

Whew

... I suppose the attraction of spammers could be considered a sign of the forum's success. Steve, your explanation just makes me appreciate more than ever the work that goes on behind the scenes to keep XMTS the welcoming, informative forum that it is. Thanks again.

**piperdown** · 24th February 10, 01:50 PM

Interesting thread...thanks Steve, I'm a bit naive when it comes to spamming and spammers so your explanation was an eye-opener...Also, I never noticed the members list before....you learn something new everyday here at Xmarks!!!

Cheers