Overwhelmed by Spam, LinkedIn Moderator Quits in Frustration
|
Lawrence wrote: "Here’s just one sample page from the End to End developers group from this morning. There is one posting below that is worthy of being allowed into the group. ALL THE REST IS SPAM. It’s like this every day." Annabella Nana Aba |
"I’m burning out on all this moderation. I’ve been trying to help save my groups, but this is just ridiculous," said Alexander Lawrence, a Technical Recruiter who actually works at LinkedIn in San Francisco. "I had thought that the volume of spam was dropping, but after weeks of steady effort on my part, the volume of spam is still just totally overwhelming."
"I quit! I’m done with volunteering my own valuable time to constantly filter out all this spam," wrote Lawrence, the moderator of the LinkedIn Groups Product Forum. "It’s a tedious, thankless job and no one is paying me to do it. Unless I can think of a better idea, I’m going to have turn off all the moderation queues, and just walk away. Any quality discussions will once again drown against this relentless river of spam."
Carl Whalley bemoaned, "It's the age old problem - you've got the numbers, so that's all spammers see."
John-Patrick (JP) Skaar advised that moderators should not convert their groups to open groups from "members only" groups where anybody can join. William Jeansonne, MBA said the solution is to carefully screen new members.
I personally moderate the Chief Marketing Officers Forum and I carefully screen out members with no photo, few connections or no relation to the legal marketing profession. Profiles with no connections are generally bogus accounts. I also delete posts that are merely links to a vendor's home page.
A tough stance was advocated by Ian McCarthy: "The junk content is coming from members of the group - which underscores the importance of taking a very firm line on junk content and using the Block and Delete option on anyone who has degraded the quality of the group's conversations." Barnard Crespi agreed, saying he screens out 30% of new members from a group he runs.
Lawrence responded, "I think it's pretty sad that we've been reduced to a policy "guilty until proven innocent" with respect to which sets of members are allowed to enter a group."
Joseph Higginbotham said, "I have always been ruthless in dealing with spam. The worst spammers are ejected immediately. I've always rejected a lot of applicants and the percentage is rising. Lately, I have to reject nearly half the people who request membership because there's something about their profile that doesn't add up. The people you kick out of the group will tell everybody else in their other groups which gives you a reputation for being tough on spam, therefore, some spammers will simply avoid your group. That's fine with me."
