Inappropriate posts are spamming the Anthias Discourse forums

[nicomiguelino]

Inappropriate (almost all of them being explicit) topics have been flooding the Anthias Discourse forums (https://forums.screenly.io/) this weekend. We would like to ask for help about this issue.

• We already added rules in the “Watched words” list so that such posts can be blocked, but that didn’t solve the issue.
• The Akismet plugin has already been enabled before the incident happened.
• As a temporary workaround, we disabled registration of new accounts (by un-checking the “Allow new registrations” option).
• We also checked “Must approve users” but we are unsure if re-enabling new user registration and leaving “Must approve users” checked will solve the problem.
• Is there a specific setting where an approval is required for a first post from a new user?

I would like to ask for recommended actions/solutions for this matter. Thank you in advance.

[Arkshine]

Hey, welcome!

There are some guides that might help you:

Tips for Preventing Spam

This documentation provides a comprehensive guide on preventing spam in Discourse forums, and includes information about various settings and tools designed to help maintain a spam-free community environment. Required user level: Administrator On most forums spam is rare. However, if you’re having problems with spam on your site, Discourse comes with numerous tools to help you automatically prevent spam. The following guide offers some recommendations on how…

If you are using Discourse AI (if not, definitely worth a try if you can)

Setting up spam detection in your community

This is a how-to guide for setting up spam detection in your community using the Discourse AI - AI triage. Required user level: Administrator Discourse AI also ships with an opinionated Spam scanner. See: Configuring and managing AI-powered spam detection in Discourse Overview Spam detection is an essential feature for maintaining the quality of discussions in your community. This guide will help you set up spam detection using the Discourse AI - …

Another plugin:

Stop Forum Spam Plugin

Overview The Stop Forum Spam plugin (unofficial) can help weed out human spammers who are able to bypass Discourse’s built-in spam tools (thanks to their awesome human powers). Right after a new user signs up on your forum (before they have time to post), this plugin will check the user’s email address, forum username, and/or IP address (depending on your plugin settings) against the Stop Forum Spam database. If the user is found in this database of known spammers, their user account will be imm…

[Saif (Saif Murtaza)]

@nicomiguelino I have gone ahead and enabled Discourse AI - Spam detection in your community using Discourse hosted LLM. I think that should help with the issue here

[nicomiguelino]

@Saif, thanks. I just checked the site settings for forums.screenly.io and wanted to clarify if AI openai dall e 3 URL and AI stability API URL are the settings that were changed. I’ll try re-enabling new user registration and will let you know if the issue will still persist.

[Saif (Saif Murtaza)]

The only changes made were in reference to everything outlined in

@sam

Configure AI spam detection