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I'm not sure that is a fair assumption. People join things and participate when they feel they have something to contribute. If they are not "actively" participating they often lurk in the shadows. Lurking is not a bad thing considering even lurking can allow people to learn.Agreed.
OAC is struggling as it is. We get new members daily, but the level of activity growth seems pretty flat to me.
The OAC is 17 months old and we have 3,900 members whose activity level varies, to say the least. In other words we attract about 8 new members a day. 80 members have left in that time, about one a week, and 240 members have been suspended for spam, roughly one every two days. In most cases these last distribute some spam to members pages before being deleted by the Admins (but not from members inboxes where they must be deleted by hand). Some members report this illegal activity to us, others don't.
It's important to keep the issue of spam in perspective. The figures suggest that less than 6% of all OAC accounts were spam, and even less (probably 1-2%) of those managed to post any before being suspended.
People have different spam tolerance levels. Those who generally stick to local academic content only (e.g. university networks) seem to have a low threshold, while those who spread themselves around the social web have a higher one and usually know how to best combat it. Beyond that generalization, spam is still annoying. For members who feel that the spam they get in their email inbox is overwhelming, you can either switch off email notifications in Settings or, as Steven suggests, use an email account that's not essential in your professional life. I personally get thousands of spam mails in an email account that I used to join anthropology list-servs a few years ago, rendering it useless for anything else. Live and learn.
As Keith notes, the admin team put in place any available anti-spam measures as soon as Ning offers them. So far, this includes a Captcha code (I agree, it doesn't deter all spammers, obviously), and verifying email addresses before activating accounts. Believe it or not, this weeds out a lot of spam-bots. Also, according to Ning (where we host the OAC), they provide automated spam protection. When someone joins the OAC, they have to create a Ning ID. This universal ID would allow that person to join other Ning networks with the same username. Ning uses this ID to trace spammers. If they get suspended for spam from another network, they'll be removed from ours, too. All of this is to say that we are doing our best.
An additional anti-spam method that Ning offers, but we have not yet enabled, is asking new members to respond to a quiz question when they sign up. We are working out the best way to make a suitable set of questions that will trick spammers, but not valid potential members. Keith's challenge to come up with the perfect specialist knowledge question is a good one. I'm not sure we can. We're thinking of alternatives. Once this is implemented, we can then keep an eye on whether or not it fixes the spam issue.
Finally, I agree with Michael that the assumption that the OAC is struggling is a stretch. I would invite everyone to participate in the upcoming discussion from October 1-15 where we can pool our ideas for animating the site and expanding content and participation.
Keith Hart said:The OAC is 17 months old and we have 3,900 members whose activity level varies, to say the least. In other words we attract about 8 new members a day. 80 members have left in that time, about one a week, and 240 members have been suspended for spam, roughly one every two days. In most cases these last distribute some spam to members pages before being deleted by the Admins (but not from members inboxes where they must be deleted by hand). Some members report this illegal activity to us, others don't.
Two kinds of spammers really. One is the human spammer who signs up and then spams. Slow and laborious, but it might be affordable to spammers based in south east asia paying employees 1-5 cents an hour, or to individual operators. The other kind of spammer is a bot, a program that attempts to register. For these, a quiz doesn't have to require special knowledge of anthropology. Use rhyming words for example. It's orange and tasty and rhymes with parrot.
Lol, I know this is a serious discussion but this is a huge assumption among many.Two kinds of spammers really. One is the human spammer who signs up and then spams. Slow and laborious, but it might be affordable to spammers based in south east asia paying employees 1-5 cents an hour, or to individual operators. The other kind of spammer is a bot, a program that attempts to register. For these, a quiz doesn't have to require special knowledge of anthropology. Use rhyming words for example. It's orange and tasty and rhymes with parrot.
I think your suggestion about people marking posts as spam is a good one except for 2 little issues. 1, The Admin group need to be able to sleep and have a life. It is obvious you think their response time is to slow now, adding a spam tag isn't going to make them any quicker. 2, I can think of a couple of posts I have made that some would consider spam and based on your 2 or 3 marking it thus it would have been knocked out yet these posts were not spam. What good would it do to remove legitimate postings? Don't you think it may turn legitimate members away with the feeling that despite its name the OAC is not an OPEN place to be.
Anyway, I acknowledge you feel quite strongly about this and that can be a good thing. The admin group is but a PM away, maybe you could offer (I have suggested this before btw) your help to combat this issue (i.e. don't wait to be asked to help, offer it). ;-)
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