BuddyPress.org

@synaptic
I think it would be useful on some situations. If you are knowledgeable about how to approach it with coding then it is very feasible.

@rcain
Activity Stream Throttling done courtesy of BuddyDev:

BuddyPress Rate Limit User Activity

Limit friendship request throttling done courtesy of BuddyDev:

BuddyPress Limit Friendship Request

Private Message Rate limit plugin includes throttling coming soon from BuddyDev

Many captcha solutions have been out there for years.

I covered a hidded registration form field in a plugin here:
https://github.com/bphelp/bp-spam-killer

I doubt this covers everything but the fight against spam is ongoing. So you have my support! 🙂

@synaptic
Nice snippets is this your site? I think it should also include the honeypot method which I made a very small plugin with here: https://github.com/bphelp/bp-spam-killer
You could easily use those functions in bp-custom.php etc. I am also liking BuddyDev’s BuddyPress Rate Limit User Activity plugin which provides activity stream throttling based on a time interval. It is however a premium plugin. You can get it here:

BuddyPress Rate Limit User Activity

I hate spam unless its on a sandwich so thank you for sharing! 🙂

@jaemaz
Is it perhaps that some members were marked as spammers?

@synaptic Thank you. They will be nuked 🙂

@dice2dice
Where is the link for the spam prevention page showing up on the home page? Is it in the menu, sidebar, etc.?

i do like the notion of having a moderation tank as an option at least i’m just saying that i agree there could be some issues that wouldn’t arise in a simple comment scenario maybe a moderation message would handle that not sure.

Fantastic

you might also want to look into wangguard its not perfect but it will catch most of the spammers and prevent them from registering.

i can give you a scenario, say person a signs up for your site and tells his/her friend hey this is a cool site check it out. person b goes onto the site to look at the activity or profile of person a and says hey i don’t see you on there whats up? person a responds, i don’t know maybe the site doesn’t work, person a and b both leave never to return the interesting but apparently broken site.

it is an interesting idea but i’m starting to think the flagging thing is the way to go and maybe something that should be considered for core (in addition to throttling) if we are trying to up our game. i think it’s important to remember that there is no perfect solution for spamming but as long as we can make the spammers lives more difficult and less profitable without impaction ux for normal visitors we will win this war by attrition.

some great plugins there thanks for sharing @sbrajesh and @bp-help

>how is this ‘too complicated’?
Can you code it?
How would you explain it to membership?

>the user doesn’t know that they are in a sandbox
lol, and that won’t lead to a flurry of support submissions?

For public sites, there has to be a balance between driving membership numbers and ‘protecting’ existing members.
An abuse / spam flag system strikes that balance & members will recognize it & admins only deal with flags. If admins handle the flags in a timely fashion, the membership response will be very positive.

Your idea is kinda interesting, but dev’ing a generic solution will be impossible.
If you release it as a plugin, damn near everyone using it will ask for some kind of tweak.

That said, prove me wrong, please!

@dice2dice
Do you know how to go to dashboard/pages/all pages/register? At the top of that page the title says Register just change that to Sign Up. At the top right corner of that same page click screen options and click the box beside of Slug. Now scroll down below the page body and you will see a text field labelled Slug. Change that from register to sign-up and click the blue Update button. Done!

Spam Killer is not in the WP Repo you need to download it from the github link I provided then go to dashboard/plugins/add new, and where it says Install Plugins you will see upload below that. Select upload and browse to where you saved the Spam Killer plugin on your hard drive. Click Install Now then activate it. There is no settings just activate it and forget it. If you search the HTML source after you activate the plugin you will see the hidden field the plugin created just like below:
<div style="display: none;"><input type="text" name="are_you_a_spammer" id="rejected" /></div>

Private Community For BP basically makes all BP related pages private and redirects the user to the page you want. Read the instructions in the readme.txt You will have to follow the same procedure listed for Spam Killer for getting, installing, and activating the plugin.

I have tried to make these instructions as clear as possible. Make sure to read the readme.txt in the plugins because the instructions are for fairly novice users. Let me know if you need more assistance.

Too complicated, imo.

Harnessing the membership for these kinds of things is a tried & proven technique.

In this context, provide a flagging system to bring activity to the attention of admins.
And provide content sweeping and IP blocking via htaccess for repeat offenders.
Not difficult to write.
I’ve done it for large BP sites and no doubt so have others.

@synaptic
BuddyPress Registration Options is similar to this idea but it only allows a user to fill out their profile and upload an avatar until the admin approves their account. It doesn’t allow posting to the activity stream however. IMHO if a user doesn’t take the time to fill out their profile then it is a good indicator that they are a spammer but I can see the value in your idea and would I would like to see this functionality in a plugin.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/bp-registration-options/

@funmi-omoba @sooskriszta @tifire @ubernaut @patricksaad
Thanks to the hard work of @sbrajesh at BuddyDev we now have a solution get it here:

BuddyPress Limit Friendship Request

@dice2dice
You can change the register page name and slug to sign-up.
You can also try using Private Community For BP:
You will also need to change line 27 in private-community-for-bp.php from /register to /sign-up to reflect the change of the register slug.
If your not using it you can get it here:
https://github.com/bphelp/private_community_for_bp
Another thing you can try is this small plugin “Spam Killer” which creates a hidden field humans can’t see, spam-bots will see it and fill it out and get a message indicating spammy behavior and it rejects their registration. Get it here:
https://github.com/bphelp/bp-spam-killer
Please read the readme.txt for complete instructions for usage for both plugins.

@sbrajesh, thanks for all your great work for bp community. if there is a way to limit message a user can send aswell, let say 10 messages in 30min etc that will be great.

Sometimes, human spam will sign up and send messages to hundreds of users.