Access to these forums should be based on paid agreements on file to the Apple Developer Program, and this will prevent these social engineers from trying to game the board and members with junk. Apple, you pride yourself on security & privacy. How about fixing the access to these forums to only developers with a contract on file and approved students only?
Yes, we seem to be in yet another period of excessive spam posts.
A proper solution is needed.
First, I note that spam that are signalled are rapidly eliminated.
In most cases, the account is created just to post a series of similar spam. So it is a very recent account, less than 24 hours old (I captured a screen copy as an example):
Hence a suggestion not to stop but at least slow down : when a new account is created, if not from a developer account, impose a period of silence (1 day ? more ? ), where user can read but not post.
In a lot of these spam messages, the poster immediately replies to their own question (possibly more than once), then marks their response as the correct answer.
This increases their reputation points, and may attract more people to click on their posts.
But surely it also makes this kind of spamming behaviour easy to spot?
And prevent?
Why not also use Captcha for non registered developers ?
Why not also use Captcha for non registered developers ?
Because the spammers will pass the Captcha. (And because Captchas are as annoying as ****.)
Yes, I believe the spam posts we are seeing are posted by humans. They only post maybe 10 at a time. If it were an automated bot, it would post 10 thousand at a time.
All it takes is determining if there is a paid contract on file, no spammer is going to mess with having to pay for and losing an account each time due to the cost and it allows apple to enforce the rules more. No paid contract on file then read only access is provided. As for students validate them via their institution id numbers, parents where needed or a student paid contract. This will prevent furious consumers from posting here as well.
All it takes is determining if there is a paid contract on file
v1 of the forum was limited to registered developers, and Apple decided against that, for whatever reason. So I don't think that's going to change back.