Solved Dear FT ADMIN... Where Are You?

FlyingMonkey

Bought Another Trailer
Staff member
Admin
I promise I am working on getting things cleared up. There was over 1600 approval items. Those are mostly new member requests that were automatically flagged, but are almost always spam accounts. Some are resource submissions, and some are posts that have been flagged for some reason.

I have to go through each one individually. There's no way to filter them by type. And I can't work from the newest to the oldest. I've knocked it down to just over 500 items. I'm currently working on ones from the end of November. When I started it was posts from back in early October when I moved for the job.
 

SP0NZ

FT CAD Gremlin
Staff member
Admin
Moderator
Mentor
Last Seen
- They do have a right to enjoy the forum without working on it. We know @FlyingMonkey knows how to eat an elephant... "One bite at a time!"

@Balu - July 2022
@fliteadmin - Past Friday
@FlyingMonkey - Yesterday
@SP0NZ - Today - He last approved his own resource on 12/14/22. :sneaky: Day 38 for mine.
@FT_Eddie - Yesterday
@Wes B. - August 2022

Some Other Ideas
  • Some forums have a "Dislike" along with the "Like" button. Maybe if a certain number of Dislike's are accumulated, a post/resource could be removed automatically. IOW - An automatic, forum self policing algorithm and save the precious admins for more important duties (or fun). Even if someone has made an enemy on the forum, it takes... say... 10 dislikes to be removed (or at least quarantined). Spammers wouldn't last 10 minutes if such a system was enacted.
  • Maybe resources could be automatically approved and let the forum Report them as necessary for removal.
As some of you know, I wear many hats. I have a demanding full-time career (day job) in tech/engineering that pays the bills, I'm a husband, and a father of 3. Flite Test is not my "day job." Never has been, likely never will be. While I do get some nominal compensation for my work on the plans, my other duties for Flite Test are above and beyond that. Sometimes, life needs to take a priority. I'm going through a major re-org at work right now, and have other personal/family issues that are taking time away from being here. Usually when folks reach out to me, I try to help out with getting resources approved, but I am not in here monitoring when new resources get added and need approval. As far as I know, there is no notification for new resource adds either so they only way to check is manually.

All that said, not all the mods here are created equally. I was given moderator access here to help with posting resources for Flite Test, not to "officially" moderate the forums, although I do help out from time-to-time with that as well. Anything that has been posted to the resources by flitetest or fliteadmin over the past couple of years was posted by me. I am also a mod on Facebook for the Flite Test Fans group, and I am fairly active there. I simply do not have the bandwidth to monitor the forums and the Facebook group, drawn the plans, and post the resources for Flite Test. I do what I can when I can. All of this comes out of any free time I have for enjoying this hobby myself (i.e. designing new planes, designing 3d printed accessories, building, flying, etc.). I can't speak for the rest of the mods/admins, but that is a little background from my perspective. Take it for what it's worth.
 

luvmy40

Elite member
As some of you know, I wear many hats. I have a demanding full-time career (day job) in tech/engineering that pays the bills, I'm a husband, and a father of 3. Flite Test is not my "day job." Never has been, likely never will be. While I do get some nominal compensation for my work on the plans, my other duties for Flite Test are above and beyond that. Sometimes, life needs to take a priority. I'm going through a major re-org at work right now, and have other personal/family issues that are taking time away from being here. Usually when folks reach out to me, I try to help out with getting resources approved, but I am not in here monitoring when new resources get added and need approval. As far as I know, there is no notification for new resource adds either so they only way to check is manually.

All that said, not all the mods here are created equally. I was given moderator access here to help with posting resources for Flite Test, not to "officially" moderate the forums, although I do help out from time-to-time with that as well. Anything that has been posted to the resources by flitetest or fliteadmin over the past couple of years was posted by me. I am also a mod on Facebook for the Flite Test Fans group, and I am fairly active there. I simply do not have the bandwidth to monitor the forums and the Facebook group, drawn the plans, and post the resources for Flite Test. I do what I can when I can. All of this comes out of any free time I have for enjoying this hobby myself (i.e. designing new planes, designing 3d printed accessories, building, flying, etc.). I can't speak for the rest of the mods/admins, but that is a little background from my perspective. Take it for what it's worth.

I, for one appreciate all you and the other mods do here. Your plans, index and parts have been a huge part of my RC life. Thank you for that.
 

Merv

Site Moderator
Staff member
...Take it for what it's worth.
First thank you for all you and all of the other moderators do. All of you are doing a great job.

We saw the spam increasing and a flame war going, cursing, threatening posts all were reported. This was definitely not normal FT material. We did not know what to do.

We all understand life gets in the way at times. We didn't know how much you did. Great to have you back.

Let us know if you need anything help. In the words of the great Canadian philosopher Red Green. We are all in this together and I'm pulling for you.
 
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Mr NCT

Site Moderator
First thank you for all you and all of the other moderator do. All of you are doing a great job.

We saw the spam increasing and a flame war going, cursing, threatening posts all were reported. This was definitely not normal FT material. We did not know what to do.

We all understand life gets in the way at times. We didn't know how much you did. Great to have you back.

Let us know if you need anything help. In the words of the great Canadian philosopher Red Green. We are all in this together and I'm pulling for you.
I'm with Merv. I volunteered for a few years on a flight sim site and feel your pain trying to juggle everything. I'm happy to help, there's no need for just a few volunteers to do everything.
 

RossFPV

Well-known member
As some of you know, I wear many hats. I have a demanding full-time career (day job) in tech/engineering that pays the bills, I'm a husband, and a father of 3. Flite Test is not my "day job." Never has been, likely never will be. While I do get some nominal compensation for my work on the plans, my other duties for Flite Test are above and beyond that. Sometimes, life needs to take a priority. I'm going through a major re-org at work right now, and have other personal/family issues that are taking time away from being here. Usually when folks reach out to me, I try to help out with getting resources approved, but I am not in here monitoring when new resources get added and need approval. As far as I know, there is no notification for new resource adds either so they only way to check is manually.

All that said, not all the mods here are created equally. I was given moderator access here to help with posting resources for Flite Test, not to "officially" moderate the forums, although I do help out from time-to-time with that as well. Anything that has been posted to the resources by flitetest or fliteadmin over the past couple of years was posted by me. I am also a mod on Facebook for the Flite Test Fans group, and I am fairly active there. I simply do not have the bandwidth to monitor the forums and the Facebook group, drawn the plans, and post the resources for Flite Test. I do what I can when I can. All of this comes out of any free time I have for enjoying this hobby myself (i.e. designing new planes, designing 3d printed accessories, building, flying, etc.). I can't speak for the rest of the mods/admins, but that is a little background from my perspective. Take it for what it's worth.
Monitoring the forums should be very low priority on the list of things to do, there are many more important things that you listed. I think it would be nice if maybe once you are a member for a while you could easily apply for moderator to help spred the load so its not 2-3 mods to go through so many recourses and reports.
 

Inq

Elite member
I am curious - Why are Resources individually approved? I just tried to do an updated version on one of my resources and even that update has to be moderated. There is nothing in a Resource posting that can't be placed in a thread post, and yet we let anyone (Spammers) do those. It would seem to me that we could let resources go in (just like a post) and rely on the forum members to Report it. It seems that might reduce the Moderators load (yes... very little) but some.
 

mayan

Legendary member
@FTCA Director please help clean up the forum for all the spam that was recently posted it’s ruining the fun for those who actually use the forum for learning and communicating with others
 

fliteadmin

Administrator
Staff member
Admin
Moderator
Thank you for reporting! Most (if not all) of the recent spam should be removed at this time. We tightened up the requirements even more and we are planning a number of upgrades to help out with moderation in the following few weeks.

Please also feel free to reach to us directly if things get out of hand, we don't want those posts to linger for any amount of time. Thank you again!

Robert
 

FlyingMonkey

Bought Another Trailer
Staff member
Admin
This forum is being hammered by spammers. I know that I've removed thousands that the filter puts into quarantine. The software usually catches other spam accounts that are associated with the ones we remove, and I'll clear them too.

But the spammers are sneaky. Some of the accounts are created, then lay dormant for a while. Others make realistic looking posts, then months later come back and edit them to include the spam.


I woke up at 2 am and checked FB Messenger, and Ben was reporting a spammer from 10 pm, one spammer had made about 50 posts. Completely filled the "What's New" section
 

MrClean

Well-known member
I report them once in a while, when I refresh and get a bunch of college applications or whatever from the same, spammer. Good portion of the time I just click on the name and hit ignore. Figure I'm not the only one reporting so, why overload the mailbox. Plus, it usually catches all the new spam with the ignore.
 

Piotrsko

Master member
Not sure that human intervention isn't required. There was a kerfluffle a while back where this would have banned about half the forum participants