DigiMusicDoc wrote:
In that case I don't see that this mod is going to be overly useful in combatting spam. It will weed out spammers who initiate a new thread and make one post. However, it will not help catch people who make spam posts as replies to existing threads. I already have a lot of those.
This mod (as well as the original Approval MOD) was never designed to "combat spam". You will not see this anywhere in mod description. If it helps you to combat spam that is great! But if it does not, well... sorry. I designed the Approval MOD for my company's Intranet and decided to share it with the rest of the community and that's all there is to it.
This mod would also annoy established members who, based on their post count, have earned a certain amount of trust. They should be allowed to initiate threads without approval.
Firstly, I am not entirely convinced that quantity = quality & trust. I have my personal experience with that and can tell you that it could be very easily the other way around. Secondly, and this is going to sound strange at first, it is exactly the absence of "post count" feature that makes this mod more flexible. Why? Because the decision on whether the post requires approval or not depends ONLY on the group membership and nothing else, but
you can play with groups. Who said that you cannot have another MOD (which, by the way, will be
extremely easy to implement, that adds a user to a certain group after he/she made x posts)? You can add users to groups based on ANY criteria (posts number, posts quality, IP address, number of times he/she used a swear word etc.). So from this point of view this mod is a foundation for moderation based on virtually any parameter, as long as it comes down to group membership in the end. I hope I make myself clear.
In another words, you are trying to make this mod very specific (i.e. fighting spam). I am trying to make it generic to be used for more than just that. Perhaps when the initial version is out and working we could have a discussion on another branch of this mod that could become "Spam Fight MOD" or something like that.
I'm frankly not sure what the value of a feature to approve the first x number of posts in a thread is at all.
I have re-read the thread above and agree with you. I misunderstood johnpitcairn who asked for the "first X posts" to be approved. I thought he was referring to the number of posts in the topic. Now I see that he actually meant user's post count. Therefore it only makes sense to implement it for 1 post (establishing a new topic).
there are many other things, especially now, at pre-Christmas time.
