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I received a vague "spam warning" and I'm worried my account has been hacked

Started by badon, April 30, 2016, 09:45:37 PM

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badon

I just received a vague "spam warning" PM from "Simple Machines Community Forum", but that user does not exist. The PM is quoted below:

Quote from: Simple Machines Community Forum
Hello badon,

You received a warning because you posted messages that are a bit on the spammy side. Please stop with that, otherwise we need to take further action.

Regards,
The Simple Machines Community Forum Team.

It's very vague, and none of my posts are spam. If someone hacked my account and posted spam that got deleted already, I have no way to see it and figure out what's going on. If someone is just pranking me with a weird PM message, then please tell me so I don't have to panic about the possibility of having my account hacked.

I attached a succession of screenshots that shows I tried to reply to the PM, but the user does not exist. The user "Simple Machines Community Forum" was not auto-filled in the form when I initially tried to reply. Putting it in manually gave me an error, and somehow the case was changed to all lower-case. Is SMF supposed to have non-existent users that can anonymously send prank PM's to people, or is this a bug/feature of some kind?

qc

Hi badon,

I followed the discussion you were having with the author of the "Menu Editor Lite" mod here and I think your posts there might have led to someone from the moderation team of this community to send this request - in the name of the team - to you.

Regarding the above discussion, I concur that releasing a free mod that introduces CSS bugs into your forum and proclaiming that the paid version fixes these bugs is bad style and not very professional. It would be nice, of course, to have the mod going through a review and be marked as incompatible with the default themes.

However, for me as the casual reader of your discussion, I think you should have worded your initial bug reporting post and especially the follow-ups differently - in a less dramatic and more matter-of-fact style - to get a better response from the moderation team. Some of the replies already speak for themselves and the casual reader is surely clever enough to draw his/her own conclusion from the given statements.

That's just my 2 cents.
Playing quizduell? Having quizduell questions? Our german quizduell forum quizcommunity.de is looking for quiz freaks to come and play quizduell with us :)

Kindred

Your account has not been hacked.
Your recent posts in that thread have been off topic and somewhat spammy.... It seems that someone else on the team agrees and issued the warning.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

badon

Dear God Almighty, when will it end? Stop harassing me. I wasn't even the original bug reporter. The "casual" method was tried, and it failed. What is wrong with you people? You insult me, you put words in my mouth (straw man argument), and now you're threatening me? ONE BUG, and it's resolved, so LEAVE ME ALONE.

Kindred

No one has made any threats, nor put any words in your mouth..  Jeez...
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

nend

In all fairness I am tired of seeing this being an issue. Baldon, no one here has anything against you, the warning is what would be considered normal moderation.

After the issue was resolved it was requested that all controversy about the matter be suspended in that particular topic as it was fruitless at the time. Any other members that continued with pushing the non-issue were also warned so don't think yourself as singled out.

Irisado

Quote from: badon on April 30, 2016, 10:48:50 PM
Dear God Almighty, when will it end? Stop harassing me. I wasn't even the original bug reporter. The "casual" method was tried, and it failed. What is wrong with you people? You insult me, you put words in my mouth (straw man argument), and now you're threatening me? ONE BUG, and it's resolved, so LEAVE ME ALONE.

It will end when you respect the decisions made by Team members and moderators of SMF.  Having just perused the posts which were deleted from the topic to review your case, I think that the moderation towards you has actually been very generous.

Your posts were merged because you double posted, unnecessarily, within very short space of time and forgiveness was clearly mentioned in both and did not require repetition.  The meaning of your posts was not altered by the merge and, even if it had been, the way to deal with this issue is to send the person who carried out the moderation a polite PM to discuss it.  Making derogatory comments about the moderator concerned in the topic is not the way to handle things and serves only to increase the negative impression that the community has towards you.

You have been moderated for inflammatory language and going off topic after being asked to stop doing so.  Both of these were to ignore the requests of the moderating staff.  Accusing a moderator of then tampering with your messages is another form of flaming, flame baiting in this case.  As a result the level of your warning has been increased.

If you want to the Team to stop, as you put it 'harassing you', you need to pay attention to how you are posting.  You were asked to stop, yet you continued, so you cannot play the injured party here.  If you continue to make inflammatory comments, ignore requests from Team members, or make inaccurate accusations towards nay member of the community here, further action will be taken by the Team.  Note that this is not a threat, it's just an explanation of how the moderation procedure works here.

I hope that this clears as few issues up for you :).
Soñando con una playa donde brilla el sol, un arco iris ilumina el cielo, y el mar espejea iridescentemente

badon

I suggested a 5-second way to resolve the original issue (before this topic, which qc linked-to), and everyone agreed it was the right thing to do, and then, it was done. I don't know why you all want to keep arguing about it. I'm sorry, but I have to turn my attention to other things right now. Maybe I can come back and argue with you some more later, if you want, but no guarantees. If you have something SPECIFIC that needs my immediate attention, let me know and I'll have a look. I have read all of your posts, but feel free to point something out to me if I have overlooked something important, and I will read it again.

Arantor

The part you have overlooked is the one where you seemed to feel it necessary to make all kinds of harassment, vandalism, malice where none was present and kept going on about it. We all agreed the change was necessary, the part we didn't agree with was your level of shouting about how important it was to add a disclaimer about a known, minor, aesthetic bug.

Sir Osis of Liver

Ashes and diamonds, foe and friend,
 we were all equal in the end.

                                     - R. Waters

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