Addon idea - Stop user from posting the same discussion and comment.

Prosper

Is there an addon that can do the following?
1. Stop users from posting the same discussion (words to words) topic more than once.
2. Stop users from posting the same comment (words to words) multiple times (more than once) consecutively?

data66

Yikes! I thought that was under Flood Control and should not have assumed it was. I don't see it there and this is standard on the other script I use.

Hope someone has a solution as duplicated content can be a mess with Google. It's also against the TOS and Forum Rules on my site.

rbrahmson

Interesting notion. Can be done, but I wonder whether misbehaved users would easily work around the strict "identical" requirement. Few days ago I posted a new plugin (DiscussionTopic) that can identify similar discussions based on linguistic analysis of the discussion topic. Linguistic analysis of free form text is inherently imperfect, but the logic in the plugin can be reappropriated to include the discussion body in the analysis and act upon it. Off the bat I can think of few issues to resolve:
1. If the combined title and body are short, the inherent imperfection of the analysis will generate false positives. Thus the plugin should operate on discussions of a minimum length, minimizing its effectiveness.
2. What to do with "similar" discussions? Send to further moderation? Trigger a cancel (seems drastic), Issue a warning prompt (which would allow the user to change a few words until the analysis won't deem the discussion similar)?

As usual, the requirements needs to be flashed out first. Until then, it's academical. But while I am writing this, others may have already have coded everything;-)

River

@Prosper said:
Is there an addon that can do the following?
1. Stop users from posting the same discussion (words to words) topic more than once.
2. Stop users from posting the same comment (words to words) multiple times (more than once) consecutively?

Tighten up flood control to a shorter duration might be a solution for you.

Is this an occasional mistake? Performance and speed vs. unnecessary lookups. more active forum moderators can delete duplicates if it is a occasional mistake.

If it is not user error, and is a common occurrence, then you need to express in forum rules not to duplicate posts. If you feel someone is breaking your terms of service rule, you have the ability to ban them and control spammers.

https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla/blob/6f1a0233ac93aaa4f6747005c7210aee6b38e897/applications/vanilla/views/vanillasettings/floodcontrol.php

Sounds more like a solution looking for a problem, where a moderator might formulate better outcomes.

https://vanillaforums.com/features/spam-prevention

https://support.vanillaforums.com/discussion/6099/flood-control-by-day