Aurora Product Coaching Session: Spam Management Best Practices
Khoros Communities platform offers several settings and features that allow you to mitigate Spam in your community. Join our Spam Management Best Practices coaching session to identify, filter and deal with spam effectively. Our coaching session will guide you through the practical tips and techniques to help combat spam and help maintain the hygiene of your community. Topics covered in the coaching session Overview of Aurora spam settings and functionality Manage Content dashboard related to spam management and its features Using roles and ranks to configure permissions to check spammers Content Filters Best practice tips Notes - Admin permissions are required to conduct the call. 👉Click here to Sign Up Related Resources Enable Spam Management Community Spam Management Review Posts Captured as Spam Khoros Academy: Communities Moderation Essentials Khoros Academy Instructor Led Training: Spam Management for Communities AuroraAurora: Review content reported by content filters
Community content filters identify inappropriate words used in community content and take appropriate actions on the content based on how you’ve configured the filters to behave. Any posts and replies, private messages, profile information, tags, and registration flow that are flagged by the content filters are sent to the Abuse tab, where you can periodically review and take actions on them. If you have been granted the appropriate permissions, you can view the content reported by content filters from the Abuse tab: The tab lists: Title: Title of the content reported by content filters Author: Member who created the content Date Reported: The date on which the content was reported Filter: The name of the content filter that reported the content Filter action: The filter action applied on the content. The filter actions can be Do not allow, Replace term, Check inline HTML and do not allow, and Take no action. Learn more about content filters. To review and filter reported content, view the below walkthrough: 10 STEPS 1. Sign in to the community as a Moderator. 2. Open the Account menu and go to Manage > Abuse. 3. From the Abuse tab, click Filters. 4. In Reported By, select Content Filter. 5. Now, you can view the list of content reported by content filters. 6. Using Actions, you can filter the content based on the content filter actions applied to them. Let's select Replaced. 7. Using Found In, you can filter based on content types. Let's select Blogs. 8. You can further filter the list based on Filter Name, Keyword, and Author. 9. The Abuse tab is updated based on the applied filters. 10. That's it. You're done. Here's an interactive tutorial https://www.iorad.com/player/2224500/Review-content-reported-by-content-filters Based on the content type and filter action, you can take these moderator actions: Content Type Filter Action Moderator actions on the content Forum discussions/Blog posts/Knowledge Base articles/Replies/Ideas/Events Replace term/None (Take no action) Edit Mark as Spam Confirm Abuse Ignore Report Ban Member Forum discussions/ Blog posts/Knowledge Base articles/Replies and Private Messages/Ideas/Events Blocked/HTML Blocked (Do not allow/Check Inline HTML and do not allow) Ignore Report Ban Member User Registration None (Take no action) Ignore Report Ban Member User Signups Blocked / HTML Blocked (Do not allow / Inline do not allow) Ignore Report Edit posts reported by content filters After reviewing the posts reported by content filters, you can edit the posts that are inappropriate and do not adhere to the community principles. While editing content, you must be careful not to modify the context of the content that the author of the post is trying to convey. To edit a post, open the Options menu on the post and click Edit. Mark posts reported by content filters as spam While reviewing the posts reported by content filters, you might find the content as spam. You can mark these posts as spam. After you mark the post as spam, the post is removed from the community and moved to the Spam management tab. Learn more about Spam management. From the Abuse tab, you can mark reported posts as spam in these ways: Open the Options menu on the post and click Mark as Spam. Click the post from the list to review and Mark as spam. Confirm posts reported by content filters as abuse After reviewing the reported posts, you can confirm them as abusive messages. When you confirm the abuse, the posts are removed from the community and this list, and are moved to the Moderation tab in the Rejected filter where moderators can review and take necessary actions. From the Abuse tab, you can confirm abuse in these ways: Open the Options menu and click Confirm Abuse. Click the post from the list to review and Confirm Abuse. Ignore content reported by content filters From the Abuse tab, you can ignore the content reported by content filters after reviewing them so that you or other moderators do not re-evaluate them. When you ignore a report, the content is removed from this list. From the Abuse tab, you can ignore a report in these ways: Open the Options menu and click Ignore Report Click the content from the list to review and Ignore. Ban members from the Community After reviewing the reported content, you can ban members who are abusive in nature. This helps to avoid malicious behaviors across the community. Learn more about banning members from the community. From the Abuse tab, you can ban members abuse in these ways: Open the Options menu and click Ban member. Click the post to review and Ban Member.About Aurora content filters
Communities are meant to be a safe space where members should feel welcomed and engaged. Sometimes, members post objectionable content that may offend other members and negatively impact the community’s overall health. Objectionable content can include inappropriate language or any other terms you might not want to see in the community. Aurora offers content filters as part of its moderation tools to prevent objectionable content from appearing in posts, replies, tags, private messages, profile information, and member registration. When members use inappropriate words across the community, content filters identify them and prevent the content from being published or replacing the words with pre-defined replacement terms. In other cases, content filters just record the objectionable content posted across the community without taking any action. Content filters can also be used to ensure that the correct words are used across the community to improve content consistency. For example, you could create a content filter to replace old product names with the correct product name. Aurora includes several default filters that can be triggered when someone registers, posts, adds a tag, sends private messages, or updates their profile information. Default Filter Applies to Filter action Smut Posts and replies Prevents objectionable language from appearing in posts. Replaces offensive terms with neutral or slightly humorous ones, if configured to do so. Remember, you don’t want to prevent members from posting messages; you just want to keep the language clean. You may want to have your moderators keep an eye out for members who repeatedly use filtered language. Keyword Posts and replies Manages specific words or phrases. Content for this filter may include product and company names—both your own and those of competitors. When filtered keywords are used in content, moderators are notified. Optionally, the terms are replaced with more appropriate or the correct term. Login User signups (Registration page) Prevents people from registering to the community with an inappropriate username or profile info (system default action). Note: The Login filter is not applied if you are using an SSO implementation that passes the person’s username to the community. You must have a system on your side to deal with this situation. Tag Tags added in posts and replies Prevents members from tagging posts with objectionable words. Replaces with an alternate tag if configured to do so. You can add terms to these default filters or edit default filters as needed. You can also add new filters to perform these actions when the filter terms are identified in the community: Do not allow: Prevents members from posting content or replies, registering to the community, adding tags, updating profile information, and sending private messages till the filter term is removed. This more heavy-handed approach runs the risk of either challenging members to find a way to defeat it or alienating them. When filter term is identified, the following error message is displayed: Replace term: Replaces the offensive term with another term. This is the most common way of handling smut filter infractions. You can configure what term to replace words that match this filter in the Replacement term field. When the filter term is identified, it is replaced with the configured term after you post the content. Check inline HTML and do not allow: Prevents the members from posting anything that contains a filtered term after ignoring inline HTML. For example, the term “crap” written in inline html format, “c<b>r</b>a<br>p” in any new post is identified as the filter term after ignoring the inline html. Take no action: Does not take any action on the filtered terms that appear across the community, but records in Content Filters dashboard to notify moderators about these terms used across the community. Tip: Replacement terms are often a better management strategy versus preventing members from posting, as some people might take it as a personal challenge and invest tremendous effort in attempting to circumvent your filters. Another way these members may try to circumvent your filters is by using variations of banned words. For that reason, you may want to plan ahead for possible misspellings or other variations when creating your content filters. Note: Content filters are not case sensitive. For example, to filter for “Test,” “test,” and “TEST,” you need to enter only the term “test” while creating the filter.Aurora: Bypass flood control
If you want to allow trusted members to publish content without being blocked by flood limits, grant the Bypass flood control permission. To deny or grant this permission for a role Sign in to the community as an Admin. Go to Settings > Users > Roles and Permissions > Moderation. Select Grant or Deny for the Bypass activity limits permission. If this permission is denied for any role and a member with that role exceeds the flood control limit while attempting to publish content, an error message appears at the bottom of the page and the content is not published. Note: Members can be granted this permission from the Activity Limits setting.Aurora: Bypass automatic spam rejection
Aurora Communities are equipped with automatic spam detection. If you would like to allow trusted members to publish content without getting scanned by the spam detection engine, you can do so by using the Bypass automatic spam rejection permission. To deny or grant this permission for a role Sign in to the community as an Admin. Go to Settings > Users > Roles and Permissions > Moderation. Select Grant or Deny for the Bypass automatic spam rejection permission.About Aurora Communities spam management
Khoros Community spam management tools run in the background, where each new message is logged and tested for spam. Additionally, our system learns about your site content as it monitors all your boards and forums, enabling it to improve its content filtering over time.Aurora: Set up content filters
In addition to the default content filters provided in Aurora, you can create community-level content filters and configure them to perform the appropriate actions in the respective areas across the community. Also, you can add terms to the existing filters or edit filter information, as required. View content filters Admins and members with permission can access the Content Filters in the Moderation settings area (from the Settings > Features > Moderation). The Content Filters tab includes the default filters as shown below: The Content Filters tab lists: Filter Name: Name of the content filter. Action: The action the filter performs when the system finds it in the community. Actions can be Do not allow, Replace term, Check inline HTML and do not allow, and Take no action. Term Count: The number of terms defined for the filter. You can edit and add terms to the default filters or add a new filter. When the number of filters in the Content Filters tab exceeds 25, you can use the Filter by name field to quickly find the filter you want. Add filter To create a new content filter: Sign in to the community as an Admin. Open the Account menu and go to Settings > Features. Select Moderation. In the left column, select Content Filters. Select Add Filter. Enter the Filter name. Select a Filter action: Do not allow Prevents members from posting content or replies, registering to the community, adding tags, updating profile information, and sending private messages till the filter term is removed. This more heavy-handed approach runs the risk of either challenging members to find a way to defeat it or alienating them. Replace term Replaces the offensive term with another term. This is the most common way of handling smut filter infractions. You can configure what term to replace words that match this filter in the Replacement term field. Check inline HTML and do not allow Prevents the members from posting anything that contains a filtered term after ignoring inline HTML. Take no action Does not take any action on filtered terms that appear across the community other than sending to the Manage Content > Abuse tab for moderator’s review If the Filter action is set as Replace term, in the Replace with field, specify the replacement term. The content filter replaces the filtered term with this replacement term. If you want to set term-level replacements, you can edit the terms after creating the filter. In Apply filter to field, select the areas where you want the filter to be applied. You can apply the filter to content, private messages and invitations, username, profile information, and tags. (Optional) If you want the filter to treat terms with diacritic marks the same as those without (for example, “chëēse” would be interpreted the same as “cheese”), turn on Ignore diacritics. In Terms to filter field, enter the terms you want to filter. Note that you can enter only one term per line. Select Add. The new filter is added to the list of content filters. You can edit the filter information and can add more terms to the filter. (Optional) For the Replace term filter action, if you want to add optional replacement terms for a certain term, open the Options menu for that term, select Edit, and enter an Optional replacement term. If you do not specify the Optional Replacement Term, the term is replaced with the default replacement term specified in the Replace with field.Aurora: Edit a content filter
From time to time, you may want to update a filter action, apply a filter to other areas, or add more terms to a filter. From the Content Filters tab, you can edit the default filters or existing filters. To edit a filter: Sign in to the community as an Admin. Open the Account menu and go to Settings > Features. Select Moderation. Go to the Content Filters tab. Open the Options menu and select Edit. The filter page is displayed with the Filter Information and Terms sections. The Terms section lists the terms added to the filter along with their respective Optional Replacement Term, if configured: From the filters page, you can: Edit filter information Add terms to a filter Edit or remove terms Edit filter information From the filter page, click Edit Info and update the required fields. Note that you cannot edit the Filter Name. Add terms to a filter From the filters page, go to the Terms section and select Add Terms. In the Add Terms window, enter the terms you want to filter. You can enter only one term per line. If you do not specify the optional replacement term, the term is replaced with the default replacement term. Click Add. The new terms are added to the list. Edit terms Sometimes, for a term added in any filter with filter action set to Replace term, you might want to add an optional replacement term or edit an existing optional replacement term. Note that you can edit only the terms that belong to the filter with Replace term action and not for other filters actions such as Do not allow, Check inline HTML and do not allow, and Take no action. To edit a term: From the filters page, go to the Terms section and click Edit next to the term. In the Edit Term window, add or update the Optional replacement term and click Save. The content filter replaces the identified with the optional replacement term in the configured areas of the community. Note that the content filter does not replace the content that is already identified and replaced with the previous optional or default replacement term. Remove filters From the filters page, go to the Terms section and click Remove next to the term. Remove terms of the filter with Filter actions set to Do not allow, Check inline HTML and do not allow, or Take no action: From the filters page, go to the Terms section and click Close next to the term.Aurora: Managing spam in your community
Managing spam in your community is integral part of keeping it safe and relevant for your members. The Manage Content page Spam management tab lists content that has been identified as spam. From this page, you can manage content marked as spam and take a variety of actions on this content. We recommend monitoring this page daily. To assist with effectively managing posts that have been marked as spam, we also recommend you select Hide from View for posts that have been reviewed and confirmed as spam. They can still be found by author or keywords in the Filters section of the Manage Content page. If you have been granted the appropriate permissions, you can access the Spam management page via Manage Content dashboard as shown here: The page lists: Title: titles of posts marked as spam Author: authors of posts marked as spam Date Rejected: the date on which posts were rejected as spam; you can sort the list based on this column Moderator: the member who reported the spam Note: Spam is removed from this view after 30 days, but you can still find it by searching. Manage spam On the Spam management tab, you can perform these actions: Review posts captured as spam Search and filter the content that are marked as spam Hide reviewed spam posts from the Spam management list. Tip: Hiding posts from the spam lists prevents you from re-evaluating them multiple times. You can still find these hidden posts if you search them in the Spam management tab. Recover a post mistakenly marked as spam Sort the spam posts in the ascending/descending order of post creation date by clicking Date Reported in the column header
