Deleting spammers (Alislia17, for example)

[Bezalelle]

I often come to the boards in the morning and see almost EVERY thread in my usual topics (Chat, Aibu, Feminism, Conception, Relationships) peppered with deletions, most recently from a poster named Alislia17.

Surely it should be possible for @MNHQ to see this sort of activity happening, and swiftly block the poster?

Ooh I was interested to know what that poster kept posting!

But yes a swift total block would be ideal.

It said the message was deleted at their own request. Was it maybe a flaw in the system?

Nope. Ignore me. MNHQ deleted it...

You'd think so but I believe MN don't have any emoyees over night, they rely on night watch?

So boards as massive as these ones can easily get spammed between around 8pm and 8am and I don't think much can be done except let night watch know?

Morning, and apologies to those affected. There's been a festival of spam lately from some very determined spammers.

We caught the spammer at around 5.30am, banned them, and removed all their posts.

As always, a huge thank you to the Night Watchers who were first on the scene - and to all the members who reported the spam.

At MNHQ, we're continuing to look into further solutions to stop spam being posted on the boards.

Thanks for the info @MichaelMumsnet.

I love this sentence:

"We caught the spammer at around 5.30am"!

Like a SWAT operation!

At MNHQ, we're continuing to look into further solutions to stop spam being posted on the boards.

@MichaelMumsnet agreed the Night Watchers do a sterling job while all the paid staff are off duty but seriously, a business like this should have a professional approach to moderation and keeping the boards 'clean' throughout all opening hours.

If Mumsnet are still not prepared to pay overnight staff, then Nightwatch ought to be given the power to suspend accounts for review the next day. At least it would mean concerted attacks like these could be halted instead of individuals working ceaselessly to hide posts already made by Bots which have the power to cover the whole board.

This kind of problem is one you expect from an amateur message board, not a huge professional operation which knows it has glaring weaknesses.

There must be a better way for us to report them too. Individual reports must be time consuming to go through and we have no idea on top of the actual spam itself how many times we are reporting them to you.

On the ‘Add message | Report | message poster’ line could ‘Report spam’ or just ‘Spam’ be added? No justification needed like normal reporting. Also if a post has been reported is there anyway that it could change from Report to Reported? So we know a post has been reported and you are not inundated with reports?

I don't think our brilliant Nightwatchers should have to tackle mass individual deletions of spam posts like we're getting at the moment. It's too much to expect of them, and not a good use of their time.

Thanks @BBInGinDrinking 
It is the most tedious part of what we do imo.

We (NW) did ask a while back if it would be possible for something to be added that would trigger a posting block until morning once we've hidden a certain number of posts by any poster ,it only ever happens in high amounts with spam.
Perhaps this could be looked into again @MichaelMumsnet ? It would save so much time.

We're looking at ways to swiftly identify and block the blasted spammers. Apologies again for the disruption - but hopefully we'll come up with something robust and workable. Please bear with us.
And - I don't need to say it, but I will - another huge thank you to the Nightwatchers - you're brilliant.