Hello, sorry this is my first post and I’ve searched and can’t find an answer to my question so hopefully someone can help me.
Our discourse forum has recently been hit hard by spammers and I’m wondering if there’s a simple solution. What I would like to do is have first posts require approval by moderators and admin which I have done successfully. But rather than then let new users require approval for each post, I’m wondering if there’s a way that they can be automatically levelled up to trust level one once we have approved a post. This seems like the most efficient way for us to legitimise new users.
I know that we can activate approve new users, but there’s no way of letting us know whether they’re legitimate user or not. Any advice would be gratefully received. Thank you.
AI-generated summary
The discussion revolves around automatically increasing a user’s trust level to level one after their first post is approved, to streamline the moderation process for a niche forum experiencing spam. bonebones seeks a way to verify legitimate users without manual checks, as they can easily identify genuine posts. HAWK raises concerns about potential human spammers exploiting the system, while Moin suggests using the “approve post count” setting as an alternative, which requires approval for the first post regardless of trust level, effectively addressing the issue without relying on trust levels. bonebones finds this solution ideal and appreciates the suggestion.
Hey there – can you explain why you want this to happen? It’s still likely to open the door to human spammers who make one post and then you open the doors wide.
What kind of spam are you experiencing and have you got Akismet enabled?
What about using the “approve post count” site setting to require approval for the first post without the need to change the trust level? This uses the number of posts instead of trust levels to determine whose posts need approval. That way you can also catch posts by users who reach TL1 before posting.
approve post count
The amount of posts from a new or basic user that must be approved
Our topic is quite niche so you can tell very easily whether it is a genuine user or spammer from a post hence my question. Only started getting spammers last few days. A few hundred with very obvious spam content! No we don’t use Aksimet, prefer to avoid the route.
That is brilliant thank you! Sounds perfect and allows for a large majority of our users to keep posting!