Now that spring has sprung, it's time for some spring cleaning here at Ning. Over the last few years, spam has accumulated on many older Ning 2.0 networks. We've heard from many of you that you would love help cleaning out this old clutter. We also need to delete old spam to ensure that Ning Networks continue to hum along speedily and our back end databases stay healthy.
What we're doing
Our approach to this spring cleaning is fairly simple: we're going to delete pharmacy spam in forums on networks without member moderation.
Why Forum discussions? We've found that a large amount of spam on the Ning Platform lives in the Forum feature. We have a high confidence that our filters can identify these posts as spam. These discussions all have titles and URLs matching "Buy X Online," where X is the name of a pharmaceutical drug (Vicodin, Adderall, Ativan, etc.). It's true that spammers target other features, such as blogs, but our data indicate that a sizable chunk of spam lives in the Forum feature. Here's an example of the type of spam we'll be deleting:
We're beginning the deletion process this Tuesday, and we're starting things off slow to make sure we're only removing pharmacy spam. We'll gradually ramp up the spam deletion over the course of this week and next week.
How this affects your network (and how to opt out)
Many Network Creators pay close attention to who joins their network, and their networks are spam-free. If you have member moderation enabled, your network won't be affected by this spring cleaning in any way.
For those of you who want to opt out, you can do so by enabling member moderation. To turn on member moderation, head to the My Network > Members > Controls area of your dashboard, enable member moderation, and save your changes. We'll update you here once we've finished deleting pharmaceutical Forum spam so you know when it's clear to turn off member moderation.
Don't have pharmacy spam in your Forum? Don't worry. We won't be deleting any forum discussions that aren't pharmacy spam. And to be absolutely clear, we will not be touching any features besides the Forum. That means we aren't disabling members, deleting blogs, or removing groups—only pharmacy spam discussions in the Forum feature.
The future
Our team is planning some major improvements to the spamfighting system in addition to the current tools already at your disposal, which include a sign up quiz, IP blocking, and content moderation. In the coming months, we'll post here again about the spamfighting improvements we'll be releasing for Ning 3.0.
Replies
Hi everyone,
Just a quick note to let you know that this spam cleanup is complete. That said, you may see a bit of slowness as we defragment our databases to reclaim the space taken up by the spammy discussions that were deleted as part of this project.
—Aaron
Since I have zero spammers on my site I would like to turn the filter off. Is there a way to do that? I hate spam and would never allow it, member would be deleted.
Dan
Hi DTM, To opt-out of the spring cleaning, simply turn on member moderation. (If it is already turned on for your site, you will not be affected.) This is a not a filter, rather a one time purge of pharmacy-related spam across the Ning platform. Once the removal efforts have been completed, Aaron will update this discussion and you can turn off member moderation.
Its always been on. Thank you. : )
Dan
my networks always been 100% spam free no spam has ever lasted longer then a minute or 2
but i dont want to turn on moderation either so ill trust yu to not mess things up..lol
just to be safe though..backup everything u delete..just in case something needs to be restored
good to hear
(i must admit when i read the "spring cleaning" in the dashboard announcenment i had a mommentary thought that the mutineers were right and ning was going to "clean house' of unwanted networks..lol
glad theres less negativity now but just pointing out that those who been following all the negativity might have jumped to that conclusion b4 reading
anyway keep up the good work but 1 thing that u should look into is cleaning up the hi i saw yoir profile and became interested in you comment scam/spam
although i ban them right away not always were all the comments cleaned up
and there may be a few left here and there
SE,
Not to worry— we're backing up everything that is deleted in this spring cleaning.
One to to note, though, is that we're not cleaning up the "hi I saw your profile" spam—this is much harder to classify with certainty than the "Buy Vicodin Online" type spam that we are deleting. If you ban these members, their content should disappear after a few minutes (there may be some caching).
should...but theres been times when it never was
i dont find much but every so often i fund 1 thats been around for a long time and was never cleaned up
I have another spring cleaning suggestion. Not spam related. BUT VERY IMPORTANT FOR OUR TRANSITION TO NING 3.0.
We need a tool that identifies dormant members. Members that have signed up but didn't come back for a certain time (maybe over a year).
What I want is being able to delete those members in bulk.
Nobody needs dormant members in a social network. Not the moderator (who eventually would have to pay for them) nor the members.
Such a tool would be even more important because Ning charges by the amount of members soon. So if you have a network like mine that is approaching 9000 member this is essential. I want to delete those dormant members and get (and keep) under the most expensive Ning payment option.
What do you think? What moderators have the same problem. What is Ning's take on this?
Regards
fom
i would never delete a dormant member because 90% of them do come back eventualy
but some habve busy lives others travel alot ive had many not viso=it for a year,..even 2 then jump back in and be active again
1 of mt most valuable expert members has a custody battle so hasnt been on in a year
i would nebver ever lose 1 member
im at 11,000 and rising fast i cant wait to get to 20,000 and pay the highest privce its a badge of honour and a sign of success
Hi fom,
This is something we've discussed for NCs who want to upgrade to Ning 3.0 once we have those tools ready. As we work on those tools, we'll keep you posted! Also, keep in mind that for current 2.0 networks, we've doubled the member limits, so you wouldn't need to worry until you get closer to 20,000 members.
—Aaron
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