So I’ll make this short since I’m sure most of you want to get on with the spam/member deletion process.
I worked at KickApps for a few years, heading up their Creative Services team, but like all the good things, my time with them ended in Dec of ‘08 and I moved on to greener pastures and my current post with ASMALLWORLD where I do front-end development.
Back in the Winter of ‘07 I spent a few days setting up harleysocial.com, a social network for Harley Davidson riders and enthusiasts. I haven’t spent much time working on the site since the initial launch, but a few weeks ago, with the holiday fast-approaching I thought it’d be fun to dive back in and revamp things a bit.
Upon my first dive I quickly became aware of a major problem that currently plagues harleysocial.com, and from what I can tell, also affects hundreds if not thousands of Kickapps-powered Communities, SPAM and the absence of functionality to swiftly deal with it. In the last few years, spammers have created headaches for communities large and small, thriving and not-so-thriving, creating “ghost” members, and pushing everything from Acai Juice (example), to Viagra (example) and cures for Acne (example). In many cases, “ghost” members are created on a large scale and can be very expensive to kill. KickApps published a document that outlines a series of steps a community administrator can take to counter spammers, many of which would likely help, but at the same time could result in a more closed, less open community, one that is more time consuming and costly to manage (vetting members takes time and money).
The spam isn’t necessarily the fault of the platform, as KickApps does bundle ip-blocking and flag-to-boot thresholds into the package, but what the platform is missing is functionality that would allow an administrator to quickly identify suspect members and disable them. The process could also be automated and regularly query members and media for suspect patterns and then take an administrator-defined action on it/them.
The problem many community administrators (paying subscribers) have is that the admin tool is missing a bulk member deletion function. So an administrator can search their member database for keywords and patterns that are likely associated with bullshit members and content, but once the query is complete there is no DELETE ALL or DELETE SELECTED MEMBERS function. This functionality seems to be what paying subscribers of the KickApps platform are calling for: http://community.kickdeveloper.com/service/displayDiscussionThreads.kickAction?w=33658&as=764&d=295037
Currently, if an admin wants to disable 50 members, he or she has to do each one individually (disabling a member involves clicking “disable”, clicking another link within a popup, then approving the action and finally an AJAX post is made to handle the request and finally the browser is reloaded – the window reload paired with the AJAX is a bit ridiculous.)
So I’ve come up with a simple javascript function that you can run from within your firebug console that will disable all members you’ve selected.
FYI: This worked for me and hopefully it will for you too – but follow these instructions at your own risk. Let me know how things work out,
1. You should be using Firefox
2. Get the Firebug plugin.
3. Go to your KickApps Affiliate Center and identify a series of members (checking the checkbox)
4. Open firebug (typically right-clicking and selecting “inspect”)
5. Select the “Console” tab, a Firebug console should appear to the right.
6. Copy and paste the javascript below into your firebug console:
jQuery('div#userCheckbox input').each(function(){
var target = jQuery(this);
if (target.is(':checked')) {
var userid = target.attr('name');
var username = target.parents('td').next('td').find('a').html();
var spanId = username + '_disableOrEnable';
KickAppsBizComponent.disableMember(userid, 'REJECTMEDIA', Ka.Info.AFFILIATEID, Ka.Info.AFFILIATESITEID);
}
});
7. Click “run” and Get ‘er Done!
All that the javascript/jQuery is doing is caling disableMember for each user you’ve selected. You should see the AJAX post/action in the left side of the firebug window.
Hopefully this will help you on your way to a cleaner more spam-free community and hopefully a KickApps developer will at some point take 5 minutes to implement a similar solution into their platform – after all, you’re all paying for this premium service so you deserve it, if not more.
Happy New Year!