I don’t know about the rest of you, the last few external communities I’ve led have this super weird spam behavior where a user comes in and says something that isn’t ‘wrong’ exactly, but it’s off. You can just tell it’s off. Spam control will never have any impact on it because it’s not spam, but it is spam. Here’s an example:
We gave Teresa help specific to her situation. An hour later, this guy shows up and says the exact same thing but in different words. So I looked and sure enough: he’s on a trial account, doesn’t have a single active event and has never used our product, and so there was nothing to be sorted out. He’s a fake customer.
Of course this was just his test to see how our community worked and what controls we had in place. Up next, he’ll post something just as off but this time with a hyperlink to something that has nothing to do with us. If we let that second post happen, he’ll go on a spam spree.
So I’ve got to go be the mean moderator who profiles people and decides who looks suspicious and who doesn’t. Buddy up there looks sus to me, so solid chance I’m going to delete his content and ban him - even though he hasn’t violated any specific guidelines yet (yes, yes - I’m going to go add a line about if we suspect you’re a spammer, you’re out).
This happens a few times a week right now (which is also wild because signing up for community requires signing up for a free trial of the product; it’s not just a few clicks!). One of these days I will be overly suspicious of someone who is legit and it will be a problem on my end. I rather not have that happen, but it’s also my job to keep community safe!
The Solution: Let us set a ‘watch list’ of sorts where we can add users to keep an eye on AND approve all of their posts before they hit the community. 97% of our users aren’t problems, but we’ve definitely got spammers circling and this type of functionality would be wildly helpful.
PS: Verint does this already. It’s a lovely feature. Please add it.
Thanks!
This makes a lot of sense, thanks for sharing@jillian.bejtlich !
Yes! This would be great!
Yes! I have been dealing with this exact issue more and more lately. Thank you@jillian.bejtlich for creating this idea.
The ability to set new users into a watchlist would be a huge step for Gainsight CC to be competitive with the likes of Khoros and Vanilla/Higher Logic. Imagine if you could leverage AI and machine learning to take it a step further and beat the competition out of the water. Wowza.
Love this idea and would love to see it implemented in 2024!
I agree with this one. I can either send ALL new questions and posts to the pending queue, or I can send NONE of them. It would be great to be able to flag individuals to force their posts only to the pending queue.
Note: I’ve also been using https://www.stopforumspam.com/ with some success to check which new usernames and emails have already been flagged by other forums and communities. It’s been very helpful.