Maximum PC

ok then

Sorry to hear about your difficulties posting. Our web team is fighting a never-ending battle with the spam filter. If it's too loose, we get TONS of spam and people complain. If it catches most of the spam, it also seems to catch tons of false positives. It'd help if, every time someone couldn't post a comment, they'd post in a thread (maybe here?) what that comment was and maybe we can find a pattern or something. Maybe everybody's subconsciously trying to sell Air Jordans.

i am wrong

I have to agree, & part of the problem is the ease with which someone can setup a user. Hell my inline skating forum has almost zero spam because of the sign-up process, part of which includes requiring approval from the forum host... In other words, the forum host must review and approve all screen names. Plus you have to go through a battery of qualifyers (including that damned annoying image capture thingy) & whatnot before you can get to the host review stage.

I realize that this is a difficult & time consuming step, but if all the mods share in the responsibility, it would spread out some of the burden, and have a very definite impact on the amount of spam... This is a "forum" afterall, a place where direct human interaction is expected, why not as part of the signup process???

nope here to

Or maybe it is because you run a roller blading forum?

I keed I keed!

Yes and no.

The problem is that the website is probably using an off the shelf CMS and spam filtering. I highly doubt that they would have rolled their own CMS. That said any system worth using SHOULD have a way to hold comments in a queue. Furthering that, they would then have to pay somebody to watch the queue (here is where some of the forum members could be made use of on a volunteer basis...).

If the CMS does not have a queue system, then there isn't much you can do. Since you'd have to build one. You forget that while the act of catching posts form users with <20 posts is pretty easy... it is the management of it afterwards that may or may not be currently available. That is something that would take a few weeks to properly build, test, and put into production. Since I doubt they have a real development staff... that might not be feasible (although I know a lot of forum members who have the skills to be able to do this and I bet they would work very cheaply at that).

It all depends on how they are set up.

We do have a development staff, but the problem is that they're responsible for coding, implementing, updating, and maintaining all of the company's websites. That means they have to prioritize, and things like "implement that thing that flags posts for review if the poster has fewer than twenty posts" falls by the wayside compared to things like "oh god nobody can get to gamesradar.com" and "turns out you can't actually click any links on maclife.com."

That sounds very stressful.

Sounds like Future US should hire more coders . Or maybe contract out specific parts of the company to take pressure off the coders? But seriously, I imagine several people even here would be willing to do certain aspects for free provided there is a GUI.

what the url for maclife

You don't care here, but since the developers work for Future and not MaxPC, that is just how it is. Future has a lot on its plate. Although I do agree that if they don't do something soon it will hurt their cause.

how ya doing

help?
Is there any way to send a message to anyone? I joined last night and asked for some help with a build on one of the threads. Of course your message said my note couldn't be posted until approved. I was fine with that. Now I've read that it only takes an hour or less to get approved, but my note/request for help is nowhere visible. And I can't seem to talk to anyone about that. As the song says: Should I stay or should I go? (there was no spam whatever in my plea for build help...

Sorry about the long wait on the post approval, seems that I wasn't the only admin/mod on vacation this week. Your post has been approved; however if it's taking a long time to have a post approved you can simply PM one of the moderators for the forum listed and they'll look at & approve the post.

Hello,
I an a novice at forums. I registered Monday Sept 11,2011 and tried to post to the Free Clinic. I am not sure what is supposed to be hapening. I also read that posts from new users need to be apporved etc. I do not see my psot anywhere nor does it show it even made an attempt to wirte a post. did I viloate some policy or made an incorrect post. Can anyone assit me? It would be greatly appreciated! Also is there some type of basic insrtuctions for using forums?

Thanks for your time