Forum Discussion
Problem inserting links
- Hi all,
Thanks for reporting, this was caused by some extra filtering on number strings due to a large number of spam posts coming in with phone numbers in them.
Unfortunately this has he side effect of preventing posting legitimate posts that have matching number strings in them. If we changed the regex to only prevent posts that were in the format of n(nnn)-nnn-nnnn then spammers would just not post in that format.
I am keeping it under review and may well turn off the block again in the mean time my advice would be to avoid posting strings of numbers if at all possible.
Community ManagerThe filter shouldn’t prevent posting urls with numbers as long as you change the text to click here rather than providing the full subject of the post / page your linking to
Here's another example:
Considering half the support.office.com articles have GUID as part of the URL, it's really annoying :)
- Allen
Hi All,
Having reviewed the spam we are now getting phone numbers in a format that was not getting picked up by the regex anyway. As a result I have remove the post block for posts containing numbers.
I promise we will only ever implement this as a last option and never for very long. Unfortunately blocking the spammers in this way becomes a 'whack-a-mole' style exercise as once you block one type of spam another usually starts or the format gets changes to get round the block.
If I may ask Allen, are these controls being put back in place? I'd rather they were personally if it helps with what we are seeing at the moment with persistent spammers on the front page. I don't even get how the spammers profit from this. Hope you get a good middle ground if possible! Thanks for your work on this, it must be infuriating.
Yes, they are still on... annoying :) And spammers seems to have adapted to the filter by inserting random characters in between.
