Sorry about the spam
15 December 2011 by Paul Rhoades
Earlier today we were subject to a sustained spam attack.
This resulted in dozens of commercial spam posts being made on the Visit Scunthorpe web site through the use of what we have identified as an automated system.
Due to the integrated nature of the site, these messages were automatically relayed via twitter to our twitter followers. We have removed all of the spam articles and accounts associated with them, and have also cleaned up our tweeter feed.
As the popularity of www.VisitScunthorpe.Com increases it is inevitable that from time to time we will be subject to these kind of attacks.
When we developed the original VisitScunthorpe engine, we deliberately set out to design a community site which did not rely on the moderation of user accounts or posts. We feel that users and the community understand and respect this position, and we have had very few attempts by local companies or individuals to post blatantly commercial messages on the site.
While VisitScunthorpe is a non commercial site, we are happy to carry local news stories about businesses and to a limited degree some commercial services offered by local residents, as many of these may be seen as being of general interest to the community.
We have always recognised that our model, without the moderation does make us susceptible to an attack such as that witnessed today. The probability of this has only increased over time as our visitor numbers have swelled from hundreds to thousands.
As a result, the founders of www.VisitScunthorpe.Com met earlier today and have decided that while it flies in the face of the open and democratic nature of citizen journalism on which the site has flourished, that we will regrettably have to look at implementing a mechanism by which posts are pre-authorised by a site moderator before they can be posted.
We are hoping that it will be practical implement this feature for new account sign ups only, and that our regular posters and contributors will be unaffected by this necessary level of administration.
If you would like add your own news article to Visit Scunthorpe, Login or sign up, its free and easy and you can start publishing your own content here, straight away.
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Please Note
Views expressed on this site are those of individual posters, who by making these posts indemnify Visit Scunthorpe and its operators of any legal responsibility or obligation.
Please respect the privacy of others, if someone gives you infomation that you use in your post, please don't identify them.
Visit Scunthorpe is North Lincolnshire's only truly independent, non commercial, community news web site.
Established in January 2010 we have lots of members with a wide range of views who all contribute
independently with articles of their own.
You won't find dozens of adverts covering our site, or some poor attempt to promote local business services under the guise of offering a community service.
Here on VisitScunthorpe we are interested in just one thing, building an online community which is representative of the people of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire and the surrounding area.
Paul. Founder Visit Scunthorpe.
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If you would like to have the ability to add articles and comments to Visit Scunthorpe then all you need to do is sign up with a valid email address for an account. This is free, your email address is confidential and we don't send out spam emails.
Once you've completed the sign up then you are free to post and comment on well... pretty much anything, we just have some basic civilised rules to prevent people from inciting violence, hatred or making individual attacks.
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