Assistance to Moderators

[MrPhil]

This is a subject which would seem to fit into a number of boards, so I'm dropping it in here. If TBTB feel it belongs somewhere else, please feel free to move it.

I am helping out as a Moderator on a small SMF 1.1.14 forum run by a hosting company for its customers to chat on and help each other. We had a tremendous spam problem that's been mostly brought under control, but could use some help in dealing with more subtle spamming attempts. It's easy enough to catch the "Buy cheap Guchee accessories! Buy here cheap Aire Jordan shoes! Cheap Couch Leather handbags!" and all that ilk. What's bugging us, though, are members who frequently post short, almost content-free posts (either new topics or replies) with links that verge on being spam. These links are usually either in a signature or a cut-and-pasted "fake signature" at the end of a post. I.e., they are general links and not specific to the topic subject.

We are discussing the possibility of having a rule in the ToS that all links in the post body must pertain to the subject at hand, and that all real/fake signature links must be to sites hosted by this particular hosting company (i.e., no third party links). In order to enforce this, we need to be able to quickly track down all the links in a given post as to where they go and whether or not this hosting company hosts them. Does anyone know of a mod or other implementation to do this? I assume that it would invoke whois and parse the results, to see who hosts the site. Ideally, a moderator should be able to click a button in a post that lists all the links and who hosts the sites, so they can decide whether it's spam or not. Anyone with experiences (good or bad) trying to do this? We want to clean up the forum so it's providing useful information and not opportunities to merely spam. Blatant spammers get banned immediately and their posts removed, but more subtle spam links get removed and the members warned.

I have suggested that the forum upgrade to 2.0.2, or at least, to 1.1.16, but I don't know how long that will take.