Will you delete content?

[Shawn Gossman]

Some forum owners will delete topics and content that isn't quality.

Sometimes they wait until the topic is no longer being discussed.

How do you feel about something like this? Do you think it's wrong to do that to make your forum seem more valuable in quality?

If you do this on your forum -- how can you justify it?

 

[meetdilip]

I do. I like quality content, no chit chat. It is not a good strategy in many cases, but it works if you do it carefully.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

It is not a good strategy in many cases, but it works if you do it carefully.

How do you do it, carefully, as you say?

And have your members ever caught on to the content deletion? Have they said anything? If they did catch you -- how will you respond?

 

[meetdilip]

I get many people who post the same content on different websites. Just to leave their forum advertisements. With a heavy heart, I delete them because it is not good for forum. Some were upset and never came back. It is a loss but lesser than what those actions can inflict.

 

[meetdilip]

If they did catch you -- how will you respond?

I don't hide, I leave a message and clearly request not to add such post. Some look harmless greetings but as a webmaster with 15+ years of experience, I know what to kepe and what not.

 

[Cpvr]

I only delete content that violates my forum’s rules. I don’t delete content that isn’t being discussed anymore as it still as value.

A majority of my forum’s topics tend to stir into quality discussions depending on the subject matter and topic, so I won’t delete content that I deem good.

Especially in my general chat forum where community bonding takes place. If I don’t want the topic to be indexed nor ranked, I’ll tag it as “noindex”.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I only delete content that violates my forum’s rules. I don’t delete content that isn’t being discussed anymore as it still as value.

Do you hard delete or move to a staff board?

 

[Cpvr]

Do you hard delete or move to a staff board?

I hard delete it if its straight up spam. If its something else, I move it to my staff board to keep track of things.

 

[JoelR]

There's a lot of soft deleted content that is hidden anyways or RSS content that is like value, and I don't see the need to keep that content in the long run.

If you're asking about strategically deleting valid content, then that's a different discussion. I would personally utilize archiving instead of deletion.

 

[frm]

Do you hard delete or move to a staff board?

I have hard-delete (XenForo) set to NEVER on the Registered level so even on the admin account I can't delete it by accident.

I would personally utilize archiving instead of deletion.

This essentially achieves it so that I can use it for two purposes: View past infractions to see if it's a user problem thing and to collect spam posts to analyze and improve spam-blocking with them.

For instance, this was the last spam post I got:

[url=https://1win-brp.top/]https://1win-brp.top/[/url]все о текущем положении дел на популярном игровом портале 1win и о новых акциях и возможностях для игроков.

I asked ChatGPT:

Analyze this and create me regex rules to find spam keywords to filter and block future content with:

Followed up by this to make this post prettier than the ChatGPT output formatted for the chat dialogue:

Give me that output in XenForo BBCode.

Spam Pattern Analysis & Regex Filters​

This post documents regex rules to filter spam like the following:

[url=https://1win-brp.top/]https://1win-brp.top/[/url]все о текущем положении дел на популярном игровом портале 1win и о новых акциях и возможностях для игроков.

Identified Spam Indicators​

• Suspicious gambling-related domains (e.g. 1win, casino, bet, etc.)
• Use of uncommon or spam-heavy TLDs like `.top`, `.site`, `.xyz`, `.click`
• Russian-language promotional phrases
• Generic ad-like phrasing typical of betting spam

Regex Filters​

1. BBCode URL linking to gambling/promotional site

\[url=https?:\/\/[^ ]*?(1win|casino|bet|slot)[^ ]*?\.(top|site|xyz|click|info)[^\]]*?\].*?\[\/url\]

2. Russian gambling/promotional phrases

(?i)(игровом\s+портале|новых\s+акциях|возможност[ья]х\s+для\s+игроков|текущем\s+положении\s+дел)

3. Raw URL with gambling domain

https?:\/\/[^ ]*?(1win|casino|bet|slot)[^ ]*?\.(top|site|xyz|click|info)

4. URL followed closely by Cyrillic characters

https?:\/\/[^\s\]]+\s*?[а-яА-ЯёЁ]{3,}

Suggested Action​

• Block or flag posts matching any of the patterns
• Manually review posts with Russian text and external links if your forum is English-only
• Consider adding these to content filters or spam triggers

I have not put it in regex to test, but I would test it before implementing it, and then refine it as needed (as I can't understand the characters used).