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Balkrishna Pandey
Balkrishna Pandey

Posted on

Seeking Guidance on Enhancing Spam Control for self-hosted forem

Hello Forem Community,

I am a member of the goglidesdev team. We are currently facing a challenge with spam users and need your expertise and experience.

Despite utilizing Forem's existing features like user suspension and comment moderation, and empowering our community members to flag inappropriate content, we're still struggling with a significant amount of spam — approximately 20 posts daily for such a small community. I am worried about what will happen if this continues to grow. These are mainly low-value, AI-generated content with backlinks adding no value to the community.

As we seek to enhance our platform's user experience and maintain the integrity of our community, I am reaching out for your advice on additional strategies and features that could be effective:

  • Optimizing Forem's Existing Features: Are there any specific strategies within Forem's current capabilities that we might be underutilizing for spam control, apart from those mentioned above?

  • Integration of Automated Tools: Could you recommend any automated moderation tools that integrate well with Forem and have a proven track record in similar contexts?

  • Role-Based User Access: What are your thoughts on implementing a system where new users are initially given 'reader' roles, with 'writer' privileges granted based on certain criteria? How could this be balanced to maintain a welcoming environment for new users?

  • Publishing Credits/Points System: Would a credit or points system for publishing content be effective in mitigating spam? How could such a system be implemented without hindering genuine user engagement?

  • Community Guidelines and Reporting Processes: How can we further strengthen our community guidelines and make the reporting process more efficient and user-friendly?

If you've encountered similar challenges on your Forem or know of any case studies, your insights could be incredibly valuable to us.

We are open to all suggestions, including innovative or unconventional ideas, that could help us manage this issue more effectively.

Your guidance and suggestions will be instrumental in helping us improve our forem. We are eager to learn from your experiences and apply these learnings to foster a healthier and more engaging community.

Thank you in advance for your support and insights.

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