SPAM Trap
 

As all of my two posts got caught by the SPAM trap because I included links (from EuGH which should be a reliable source) I have the pleasure to say thank you to three of (oliver2002, totti and Mikel) you service professionals for their heads up (I don’t include links within this post as totti advised me to wait for another 2 to 3 posts until I add links again).

Still I am puzzled what happened and I feel very uncomfortable, let me explain a long story short:

• After several unsuccessful attempts to bring my post up (Miles & More Forum) and without receiving any notification what went wrong, I navigated this BB and found the service & support section.
• I (tried to) open a new thread (without links) and asked what happened with my entry. After a while a window appeared on my screen basically seeing as my post did not pass SPAM filter, a moderator will contact me.
• I feel guilty without knowing what I made wrong.
• If you have to wait, time ran very slow. I search again and found a contact form, which I used. Mikel told me that the post in question was approved by a moderator and is now displaying. Independently oliver2002 wrote a similar PM.
• I looked after my post and after a while I found him a post # 3 with 15 something posts following. As my statement differed from all replies, I realized that it went unread.
• I replayed but my second post did not pass SPAM filter either and totti approved my post.

As I feel such a situation unpleasant, may I ask you this:


Thanks for taking into consideration!

Smart Shopper

While I do not want to defend our delay (12h?) in responding/approving your posts caught in the spam trap, please take into consideration that moderators are volunteers who take care of their responsibilities in FT in their spare time and that FT only has a small team of admins who work full time in the US Mountain Time zone.

F. Y. I.
 

Welcome to FT!

I am no mod but I learned something from the conga threads in SPAM forum.

FT has a built-in mechanism (spam trap, I supposed). Whenever there's a hyperlink in a post from a poster who has less than 5 (or maybe 10?) posts, the post will be send to the mod team for further review before anyone can see it publicly posted in the forum. I believe human intervention is called upon to review if a hyperlink is legit and spam-less.

One thing for sure. Spammers will always put a hyperlink in their posts. (Otherwise how can they attract traffic?)

This mechanism has nothing against you personally. It's not perfect since sometimes true spammers do get through before the mods can delete their spam posts/threads. (You are not going to believe how many spam threads promoting buying flowers, shoes, or porns I'd seen popping up in the middle of the night). I always try to help our mods and send a RBP (Report Bad Post) so someone can take care of it.

As oliver2002 pointed out, all our mods are volunteers and not on FT 24 hours. If you are still running into the same problem (not seeing your own posts/threads right away), I will suggest you contact the forum mods directly. PM them so they can get right on it when they check PMs. You can find the mods on duty from the lower right-hand corner of each forum.

Hope this helps!

ps. If you would like to read the frustration from fellow FTers, I have one sample thread for you. This post is how I found out about the built-in measure. This thread is what would happened when a conga line involves newbies or less productive posters.

pps. If you cap all the letters in the word "spam", FTers will think you are talking about our SPAM Forum. We do have a SPAM Forum that has nothing to do with spam. :D