Check Recently Joined Members
From PluginWiki
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What it does
This function allows you to identify people who've probably joined multiple groups at once, and who therefore need extra investigation to show that they're not spammers.
Remember that people might join a few groups which are near each other, and that's fine. You should only worry if people join very many groups, or groups which are a long way apart.
This function will only show people who have attempted to join a group where the group owners/moderators:
- use the Moderation Plugin for processing pending members or members, and
- have a group access key, and
- have this Check Recently Joined Members function enabled.
There are two related bits of function.
- Member Of allows you to see whether members are members of other groups that you moderate.
- The "active in" function allows you to see whether members are actively posting on other groups that you're a member or a moderator of.
Configuring the function
Access Keys
You must have an access key for your group. If you don't have one, or aren't sure, look at Access Keys.
Configuring the database
You should be prompted to decide whether you want this function. But you can configure it manually if you decide to add it later.
The database is stored on a special database server. It's not stored on Yahoo, because it breaks Yahoo's database function. First, you need to configure the database from the Checking tab:
Normally, you should just use the standard DB, at http://db.modplugin.org (also known as http://modplugin.test-site.org.uk - they point to the same place), kindly hosted by Nigel Mundy. So all you need to do is check the Enable checkbox.
But if you want to use an alternate database, then configure it here. Just check Use alternate and set up the URL - with no trailing slash - in the box. If you want to create and host another one of these databases, see ModDB Server Setup for a description of what it does.
If you want to ignore certain groups and not be told about them, put the short name for the group in the Exclude box. Separate multiple groups with a vertical bar |. For example, to exclude http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EdinburghFreegle and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreecycleGlasgow put EdinburghFreegle|FreecycleGlasgow.
Once you've done this, then the plugin will check this database on the Pending Members page. You can also configure it (below) to periodically check your membership list.
Configuring periodic checking
You should probably also configure it to periodically check your actual membership list:
- You need this if you don't approve pending members, but just let people join.
- You may have approved people before they've joined other groups (or before that's been spotted by the plugin run by the moderators of those groups), so you might have missed someone.
Do this by clicking the Periodic Checking button on the Checking tab.
You configure the following things:
- Whether you want the periodic checking on.
- Whether you want to be alerted for groups in your crosspost list. Since groups in your crosspost list are likely to be geographically close to you, members might validly join them - so you might want not to be told about that, and only be told about members joining other groups.
- How frequently to do it. The frequency is in hours - 12 is a good number to use. 0 means check each time, which is useful for debugging (though it can lead to you being prompted multiple times for the same member, since Yahoo has a lag after you remove someone).
- How many groups other than the current one the member must be on before the plugin warns you about them. This defaults to 5, which is a good number to spot people joining lots of groups (remember that lots of people might join a couple of groups). If you set it to 0, you'll be warned for the first other group that they join.
- What you want the default to be when it asks you what to do.
Turning it off
Just empty out the DB URL box.
What you see
You'll see things on the Pending Members, Members, Pending Messages and Messages pages, and if you've configured the periodic checking you may see popups from that at any time.
In both cases, don't be hasty.
- It just means someone's a possible spammer - it's not definite. So don't just reject or remove anyone you see with this warning - it might be wrong.
- Instead, it's better to contact the owner of that group to see if the actual Yahoo ID or email address is a pending or approved member on their group.
- Please do this directly, rather than via a "has anyone got X?" mail to your modsquad.
- If you click on the link, it'll open a new tab for that group, from where you can get the -owner address.
- Remember that people may have valid reasons for joining groups, even if they're far away from yours. For example, they may have family in your area.
Bottom line, though, if you see someone joining loads of groups, then that's pretty suspicious.
You may then see a warning about the member:
This means they've either joined, or tried to join i.e. it includes people who were rejected, because from the point of view of identifying spammers, the fact that they even tried to join shows which groups they're targetting.
If they've joined multiple groups, you'll see multiple warnings.
Reporting Multiple Joiners
If people join many groups, and they're geographically separated, then they're probably a spammer or a harvester. You'll see this icon:
If you click on this, you'll be taken to a page to report them as a multi-joiner to be added to the Spammer List. You'll need an access key to do this.
You can change the thresholds used to decide whether to flag someone as a multijoiner in this way, though they'll only be added to the list if they exceed the default values of 50 groups within 14 days or 20 groups within 7 days.
Testing Pending Member Checking
A Special eMail address has been created to allow you to check that the function is working on your setup.
In order to test it, go to https://secure.modplugin.org/pendingcheck.php and enter the URL for your group. The server will then attempt to join your group as pending-check@modplugin.org. This will be detected as a pending member on one or more other groups.
If you let it join, then it will show up both in the periodic checking (see above) and Spammer List function, if you have them configured.
Periodic Checking
If the periodic checking finds a member who's recently joined another group, you'll get prompted about them.
Be aware that someone will show up even when their membership request has been rejected by the other group. This aspect of the periodic checking feature covers both successful and unsuccessful attempts to join, because from the point of view of identifying possible spammers, the fact that they tried to join the group is indicative.
You have a number of choices:
- Do nothing. Nothing will happen, but you'll be prompted again for this member next time the scan happens.
- Mail member. This will only work if you've configured a message to send, in More Standard Messages#Mail_Multiple_Joiner. See there for more details.
- Remove member. They'll be removed from the group. Yahoo sends them a message when this happens, so they'll know.
- Ban members. They'll be removed and banned. Yahoo doesn't tell them about this.
- Do nothing and ignore member until they join another group. Nothing will happen, and you won't be prompted for this member until, erm, they join another group. This means that if someone joins a few groups, and you spot them and think they're ok, and they then go on and join lots more, you'll get the chance to see this.
- Mail spammmer group. This allows you to make a group to ask about the spammer. The name of the group is set up in More Advanced Options, but defaults to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FCMODSpammers .
- Stop scanning. Nothing will happen and the scan will be stopped.
- Do nothing and ignore member forever. You should only select this if you're very sure that this isn't a spammer (for example, edwhuk is Edward), because you'll never be told about this member again, if they join other groups.
- Stop scanning and ignore group forever. This is if you never want to be told about multiple joiners on this group again in future.
If you say you want to ignore someone but then decide you don't want to ignore them after all, then you can clear this (though it's a bit fiddlesome).
- Type about:config in the URL bar and hit return
- Type pendcheckignore in the Filter bar
- Find the one you want to remove
- Right click on it and select Reset.
What's going on
You only need to read this if you want to understand a bit more about what's happening here.
