User talk:Arrow

The archived version is on Archive 1 and Archive 2. Previous content is now on Archive 2. --Arrow Windwhistler (talk) 01:26, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Spam accounts

Hi Arrow! Thanks very much for your help trying to block auto-generated accounts. I just had one question: How are you determining whether an account is a spam account or not? What I tend to do is look at the IP addresses for each new user, and if I catch one that has two or more accounts created in a recent period of time (a month or two), I flag the accounts. But if they've only created one, my confidence isn't so high that they are spam because it's too hard to tell. What method are you using, maybe it's better than mine? Thanks! Procyon 17:00, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

OK, no problem, I appreciate the effort regardless. Yeah, I'm always afraid of false positively catching someone up in a sweep, that's why I look for multiple accounts from the same IP. I added you to the Check Users group so you can use Special:CheckUser. It's a time consuming process but it can give you greater assurance that you're banning people who have no intention of contributing to the site. I should talk with Prod about improving our captcha process again. Procyon 18:30, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

I've undone this as CheckUser is a very powerful permission that needs to be properly approved first. -- Prod (talk) 18:31, 13 February 2020 (UTC)