New Stormtrack changes for January 2012

[Dave Gallaher]

We will be exercising veto power over usernames that are not consistent with our community standards, so supersexyspotterman69 would not pass the review stage of registration. You might see it in the user list temporarily but it wouldn't have posting privileges.

Tim

Can I have David Hoadley for my username?

 

[TJKLECKNER]

How do the spammers make it past the essay?

 

[Tim Vasquez]

I'm a mod at a forum with about 530,000 members, and over 1.6 Million posts, and we have found that spammers are getting very creative as of late. Registration checks will get the bots, but the human ones get by them fairly easy.

Here is what we do to combat spam:

1. New user registrations do not get access to PM's or signatures until they are off of moderation.
2. New user registrations are all moderated for the first several posts. The exact number is not released to the membership because the spammers were getting too smart for that. A few valid posts to get thru the system, then spread their crap. Spammers can get by the registration checks, but they have a piss poor comprehension of the english language. Posts that contain structural errors, grammatical errors, or odd punctuation are almost ALWAYS spam. Sometimes spammers will attempt to evade moderation by copying previous posts that are valid and on topic.

These actions keep the spam that becomes public to a minimum if the posts in the moderation queue are all given much scrutiny.

This does require changing some usergroups around, but isn't too difficult to implement... And no more essay's for new user registrations

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

Hi JSmith... we're glad to have your expertise here. Fortunately we haven't seen much of a runup in spam yet. Post moderation is a great idea, especially the idea of an ambiguous value for the post number. We'll certainly exercise that option if we start seeing problems.

Can I have David Hoadley for my username?

Sure, as long as it's okay with David.

How do the spammers make it past the essay?

They sometimes do, but generally a weather enthusiast in Omaha is going to have a whole different style of writing than some guy sitting in a cubicle in Bangalore. We have the advantage of having seen so many essays over the years that the patterns are somewhat obvious. If the essay is too brief to tell anything, it doesn't pass.

I would like to caution the moderators not to share any of the actual essays, even as examples, since that woud be useful data for spammer registrations.

Tim

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

I'm a mod at a forum with about 530,000 members, and over 1.6 Million posts, and we have found that spammers are getting very creative as of late. Registration checks will get the bots, but the human ones get by them fairly easy.

Here is what we do to combat spam:

1. New user registrations do not get access to PM's or signatures until they are off of moderation.
2. New user registrations are all moderated for the first several posts. The exact number is not released to the membership because the spammers were getting too smart for that. A few valid posts to get thru the system, then spread their crap. Spammers can get by the registration checks, but they have a piss poor comprehension of the english language. Posts that contain structural errors, grammatical errors, or odd punctuation are almost ALWAYS spam. Sometimes spammers will attempt to evade moderation by copying previous posts that are valid and on topic.

These actions keep the spam that becomes public to a minimum if the posts in the moderation queue are all given much scrutiny.

This does require changing some usergroups around, but isn't too difficult to implement... And no more essay's for new user registrations

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

AS a past moderator on another forum, I can validate and agree with these tips!
Had to deal with the sneaky spammers more than a few times myself.

 

[Andrew Stoller]

Why is the target area viewable by non members? I think that's why many people have stopped posting, so freeloaders can't get information. I think that should be changed. Also, I loved the way the target area was way back when, with now threads and FCST threads, and having a separate forum for post storm discussions. It just made things more manageable and organized and people used to post more often.

 

[Bryan Stokes]

Tim,

Thanks for the changes! I love how you're always trying to improve the site.

Why is the target area viewable by non members? I think that's why many people have stopped posting, so freeloaders can't get information. I think that should be changed.

I agree with Andrew. The Target Area shouldn't be viewable by the general public, unless there's a reason I haven't thought of. It should only be viewable by forum members.

Thoughts?

Thanks again for all of the hard work. I've always loved this site and it has played a very important role in my development as a chaser!

Bryan

 

[Skip Talbot]

I agree with Andrew. The Target Area shouldn't be viewable by the general public, unless there's a reason I haven't thought of. It should only be viewable by forum members.

That was probably an unintended casualty of moving to a simpler, one forum Target Area. We might need to go back to separate Forecast and Reports sub-forums to get that feature back as I don't see a way to make just certain threads visible to members only. We also definitely want the Reports threads visible to all so it would probably not be best to make the entire Target Area visible to members only. I think Tim is still making changes so I'll see if we can make some suggestions.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Why is the target area viewable by non members? I think that's why many people have stopped posting, so freeloaders can't get information. I think that should be changed. Also, I loved the way the target area was way back when, with now threads and FCST threads, and having a separate forum for post storm discussions. It just made things more manageable and organized and people used to post more often.

That was definitely unintended; it probably happened during one of our recent reorganizations. Thanks for letting me know. I'll set it to how it was -- which was where guests could see the post titles to get an idea of what was in those forums, but not be able to read the post content.

While we're on that subject, I'm willing to consider thoughts and opinions about having Target Area public vs. private. One reason we originally made it private was to help provide a better atmosphere where the top qualified NOAA and SPC people (yes, we have quite a few, like Rich Thompson and Greg Stumpf) can post without worrying about any issues that might come with public scrutiny. Now that nicknames are allowed on Stormtrack and NOAA users can go anonymous as far as the public is concerned, this isn't so much of a concern. I think what we're down to is whether there is a genuine, adverse effect having Target Area visible and whether it will get undeserving people to the storm of the day.

I will say that as the owner of this site, I do have a vested interest in allowing Target Area to be widely visible and completely indexed by Google, since that helps preserve the strength of this website, brings in more users that we wouldn't have otherwise, and reinforces Stormtrack as the prime spot for forecasts. On the other hand, that interest is self-defeating if that's enough of an issue to annoy our experienced users or deter them from posting. So I'd like to solicit some feedback about this and see what you'd like. In the meantime I'm going into our configuration to see what's wrong and lock Target Area back up.

Tim

 

[Jeff Duda]

That was definitely unintended; it probably happened during one of our recent reorganizations. Thanks for letting me know. I'll set it to how it was -- which was where guests could see the post titles to get an idea of what was in those forums, but not be able to read the post content.

While we're on that subject, I'm willing to consider thoughts and opinions about having Target Area public vs. private. One reason we originally made it private was to help provide a better atmosphere where the top qualified NOAA and SPC people (yes, we have quite a few, like Rich Thompson and Greg Stumpf) can post without worrying about any issues that might come with public scrutiny. Now that nicknames are allowed on Stormtrack and NOAA users can go anonymous as far as the public is concerned, this isn't so much of a concern. I think what we're down to is whether there is a genuine, adverse effect having Target Area visible and whether it will get undeserving people to the storm of the day.

I will say that as the owner of this site, I do have a vested interest in allowing Target Area to be widely visible and completely indexed by Google, since that helps preserve the strength of this website, brings in more users that we wouldn't have otherwise, and reinforces Stormtrack as the prime spot for forecasts. On the other hand, that interest is self-defeating if that's enough of an issue to annoy our experienced users or deter them from posting. So I'd like to solicit some feedback about this and see what you'd like. In the meantime I'm going into our configuration to see what's wrong and lock Target Area back up.

Tim

Well, I think with all that has happened over the last year or two, the mass exodus from ST has mostly completed and I have doubts that many of those who fled will come back. As the forum now stands, many marginal days now go without a FCST thread, and even some of the bigger days only have a handful of forecasts contained within their thread. I don't think that's entirely because of people unwilling to share their target areas. Rather I think it's because of the number of people who no longer visit the site on any sort of regular basis, and those who have gone to using other methods (private blogs and Facebook, for example) to share their forecasts. I would find myself annoyed if someone ended up following me because they saw my post on ST, but at the same time, I don't have to list a specific city, county, highway, region, or whatever in my forecast. Therefore, I say with some careful writing, members should find it pretty easy to avoid giving away chase targets. So I can't say I would oppose making the target area fully public. I say it's worth trying.

 

[Simon Andersen]

I've looked around and it seems possible to delay indexing of webcontent until after a set period. I'm far from an expert on this but I'll look into it if no-one else is and there's interest in this approach. Shelved content would be public and active discussions private.

 

[Drew.Gardonia]

I think allowing random user names is stupid. Having real names allows us to know who each other is, put a face with a name, etc... on Facebook. I say keep the real names. Just my $.02.

what about privatizing the viewing of the entire forum to members only? Aside from employers and other things, would there be a valid concern with insurance companies browsing here and cancelling some people's auto policies since they are storm chasing and intentionally placing their vehicle in harm's way?

just a thought.

 

[Jesse Risley]

what about privatizing the viewing of the entire forum to members only? Aside from employers and other things, would there be a valid concern with insurance companies browsing here and cancelling some people's auto policies since they are storm chasing and intentionally placing their vehicle in harm's way?

just a thought.

I don't speak from a personal platform of any expertise in the insurance industry, but this topic has been discussed previously, and there were some who were familiar with the insurance industry arguing that yes, what you gave as an example could conceivably happen. Since one could easily argue that chasers are at a higher risk for damage that would result in a claim, insurance companies would want to take that into consideration when assessing premiums or otherwise paying for claims and balancing that with the fine print in your given policy. I did know someone who once worked as an investigator for an insurance agency, so they do employ people to investigate claims and save the firms money whenever possible. I have no idea how much attention is paid to vehicular claims versus something like job-related claims, which could have a greater likelihood of fraud, but this has dissuaded some from posting much in the way of chase reports or forecasts in the past.

 

[James Hilger]

My insurance tried this but final result was since im technically not employed to chase they had to pay. It's my free will where and when i drive. I was able to get paid without ever even having to file the lawsuit. I have since then rhino lined my vehicle and built a hail guard so hopefully i dont have to worry about it anymore. It was far cheaper than painting it anyways.

 

[John Farley]

I liked the separate FCST and NOW threads and would like that to come back. As to the question of people mooching off forecasts and leading to chaser convergence, I have my doubts about that. I think it has more to do with when and where the storms are - i.e. holiday weekend in OK equals massive convergence - as well as, perhaps, in 2010, all the hype about VORTEX 2. With no VORTEX 2 in 2011 and fewer instances of big days on weekends in OK, there did not seem to be as much of a massive convergence problem.

In general, I am not convinced that ST forecast threads are a significant cause of massive chaser convergence. I think that the FCST threads are an excellent learning tool for new chasers, and sometimes help remind us older chasers of considerations in the forecast that we may have overlooked.

 

[David Drummond]

I've had a number of people tell me they tracked me down to follow me chasing.....via Spotter Network. I've never had anyone say they saw where I was going as posted on ST (or any other venue for that matter). It might happen, but I can only relate what I have been told, and the SN thing has happened quite a few times.

It's nice to see some updates, but I seriously, seriously wish you would reconsider dropping the real name requirement Tim. If not, I'll eat a hailstone if you aren't regretting that decision in 6-9 months. It's inviting nothing but trouble and drama from troublemakers in my opinion. Sure, you can be swift with the ban hammer, but they will just create another persona and be back. Perhaps you could make a special exception for those in government employment to have an alias (I can see the reasoning there), who have been verified as to identity, but alias in general is bad.

On the other hand, they have a wealth of valuable knowledge to share, and without the real name, how does anyone know if they are learning from Greg or Rich, or some random person that decided they were a chaser last week and is proficient in using Google and regurgitating information? (Perhaps some sort of icon or member designation for these verified people?)