Comment on Automatically hiding spam works

  1. XPerimental Mon 04 Dec 2017 01:24AM UTC

    Lol, I was only checking this out because my most recent PWP was marked as spam... But good to know that it wasn't because someone reported it as such :P
    I don't think there's an issue if something is hidden temporarily until it's reviewed as spam (*wink* to whomever reviewed mine, hope it was your kink), though I do hope that if it is confirmed as spam that our lovelies on the Ao3 team follow up afterwards so that if it's all from the same account they can be warned not to do it again, maybe?

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    1. AnonEhouse Tue 05 Dec 2017 03:20PM UTC

      Stark Evolution in action

      When I report spam, AO3 replies :

      The spam content you brought to our attention has been found to violate our Terms of Service; as such, the users have been banned and the content removed.

      Spammers don't get warnings- they're not fans who've made a mistake, or not realized they were doing something not allowed. Spammers just get kicked off.

      I can't imagine ANY actual fan work being mistaken for Spam by an AO3 volunteer, so I'm sure as soon as someone looks at your work, it will be unhidden.

      The Spammers will never give up, I guess. They seem to hit AO3 with a massive flood of spam once a year, to the point AO3 has to temporarily turn off the invite queue while they handle it.

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      1. XPerimental Wed 06 Dec 2017 02:03AM UTC

        That's awful. (that spammers hit like that, I mean) I just thought it was funny that my coffee-adventure-hard-smut got marked as spam, but figured it was because I'd posted often?
        But jeez I haven't been on Ao3 a whole year yet, I hope they can figure out something so they don't have to deal with this as much :(
        But then again, the spam AI probably helps :)

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        1. AnonEhouse Wed 06 Dec 2017 02:16AM UTC

          Stark Evolution in action

          AO3 deliberately doesn't say what the Spam detector uses to mark something as suspect (the spammers could very well be reading this post!) so I don't know what triggers it. I'm guessing it uses a number of different indicators, and maybe they change if a lot of spam gets through anyway.

          I don't think anyone has come up with a foolproof way of keeping spam out while still allowing users to post & comment. Whenever the site seems slow, I run a spam hunt, just in case. ;^)

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    3. zephyr21 Fri 09 Feb 2018 08:19AM UTC

      Same as me. I just posed a pwp and it was flagged as spam. How long did you get them unbidden? I don’t know if I need to wait longer because I wrote it in Chinese.

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      1. XPerimental Mon 17 Sep 2018 07:36PM UTC

        Given the time, probably already back up.
        I'm going to say mine was down for, at most, 48hours, but most likely less than that.

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