At the moment https://zig.news/ front pages has dozen of unrelated spam posts. I hope they can switch to curated pre-approval model of publishing. After all, the volume of real articles is still small.
3 Likes
I have reported spam in Zig NEWS many times, but this is just too much. I agree, they should probably switch to approved-only articles. I also offer help in curating / approving articles, FWIW.
6 Likes
It seems that the spam has been removed.
I still see one “Global Laser Hair Removal Market Recent Trends with Demand | Emergen Research” that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Zig.
It is always removed but in the mean time, we see far more spams than actual articles. IMHO, this is a serious problem, mandating measures (such as manual pre-approval).
Forem, the CMS used by zig.news doesn’t have an option to enable posting pre-approval unfortunately (or if there is, I haven’t found it).
The core of the problem is that Forem is a messy project (written in Ruby, deploys to a bazillion container instances) that I don’t have full control over, and so I’m limited to using only what the original creators offer me.
I’ve set the platform to github-only mode as that’s the only tool at my disposal right now to stop the spam. (There are also some other settings but I think they’re mostly useless).
The real solution is to just replace Forem with something custom made. Single executable, no containers, no weird stuff. Problem is that it takes time, but I’m working towards that goal.
My plan is to work on a replacement once Zine’s templating engine is complete enough.
In the meantime I’ve set the site to invite only mode (ping me at loris@zig.news for an invite), although I have to verify that this doesn’t break people logins from GitHub.
I’ve disabled email registration, leaving GitHub as the only way to sign up. People with existing accounts that only use email will still be able to log in but new accounts will be possible only via GitHub.
If somebody reading this wants to join Zig NEWS but doesn’t have (nor want) a GitHub account, I can create an invite for them (ping me at loris@zig.news).
I’ll leave it like this until the day we switch away from Forem.
7 Likes
A reasonable workaround – the only way to publish an article is to send a PR to zig NEWS github repo. Moderators will review the PR and merge it in, publishing the article. Is it what you mean by “github-only mode” or just github authentication?
just github authentication, users can still post.
Then my suggestion stands. Disable user’s ability to post all together. Let github users create PRs for their new articles. You review and merge PR and the article is published.
The software has probably no idea what git is (apart from one small plugin that uses it for authentication), you can’t just tick a checkbox for github mode and have things be approved via github. It would require modding the existing software to such an amount, that it would be easier to create something simple from scratch. Your suggestion is just not practical.
Note that the problem did not disappear, a new spam just arrived https://zig.news/kiinemasterpro/kinemaster-pro-mod-apk-download-latest-version-for-android-2024-36o9
1 Like
This has started happening again recently. The zig.news site is full of spam articles.
1 Like
Yeah, that’s sad. I gave up on this site, I used to report spam as soon as I saw it, and sometimes it would remain visible for days (weeks?). Ziggit is it for me now.
I took a gander at the Forem documentation, and it looks like there are both admin and super_admin roles available.
I’m sure we’d all prefer @kristoff work on his various genius projects, rather than play Whack-a-Mole singlehandedly on the spam problem.
Loris, what do you think about giving some trusted users admin access so they can clean up when this kind of thing happens? Many hands make light work.
5 Likes
I think this is a good time to remove that site and move all useful articles here. It will make it easier to manage Zig resources.
1 Like