Remove text-decoration:none and color:#333333 from forum posts

Question

There is no reason to hide text in forum discussion, except for spamming purposes. I suggest to remove some of the formating from the forums.

Common technique used by the SEO spammers is to (optionally) quote a reply and add a grayed SEO link to one of the words in the reply or singature. The link would be colored using the normal text color to look like normal text except when being clicked, the browser navigates to the web site being remoted by these SEO spammers. New spammers seems to be posting varge replies without quoting.

Note Oracle's forum is being spammed by the same spammers with limited formating support. I found these spamming phrases on Apple, Dell, IBM, Motorola, Cisco and Ubuntu's forums as well, though I haven't register to see how their formating support are.

spam phrase used

site:microsoft.com "What you said helps solve my problem"

site:microsoft.com "Many thanks to your explanation!"

site:microsoft.com " I'm puzzled long"

site:microsoft.com " I've been looking for the answer for long time"

site:microsoft.com "My problem has been solved with it"

site:microsoft.com "The information is nice, Thanks!"

site:microsoft.com "It has wasted me a lot time already"

site:microsoft.com "Could you give more specific decription"

site:microsoft.com "I've been stuck on it long"

site:microsoft.com "Thanks to the reminding"

site:microsoft.com "Thanks for your instruction"

site:microsoft.com "It annoys me long"

site:microsoft.com "I often neglect these"

site:microsoft.com "Any schedule to solve it"

site:microsoft.com "This is what I'm looking for"

site:microsoft.com "Is the link invalid? The link cannot be opened."

site:microsoft.com "Thanks for your analysis"

site:microsoft.com "I got more deep understanding about this part"

site:microsoft.com "It helps me out of the problem"

site:microsoft.com "Is the link expired" 

"Now I have a more clear idea about it"

site:microsoft.com "Could you explain it more clearly?"

site:microsoft.com "It is good for reference."

"Any related guide to learn"

"I've tried it and it works"

"Many thanks to your description"

"What you offered cannnot solve my issue"

"Thank for sharing these info"

"Maybe my problem is something stupid"

"Why I cannot open the link here?"

"It's comprehensive"

“It is just the solution for my problem”

 "It's quite useful, Thanks for your sharing!"

 It's hard to decide the problem as you provided little info

---

---

The following is signature, not part of post
Please mark the post answered your question as the answer, and mark other helpful posts as helpful, so they will appear differently to other users who are visiting your thread for the same problem.
Visual C++ MVP

Answer 1

=?iso-8859-1?B?U2hlbmcgSmlhbmcgPz8gW01WUF0=?= wrote on Sun, 24 Oct 2010 15:20:25
+0000:

There is no reason to hide text in forum discussion, except for spamming purposes.

Indeed, but this refinement would go too short. The only way to stop this and other
idiotic intentional or unintentional "text decoration" is to completely forbid
pasting anything else than plain text in the editor field and allow only a very very
few editing options in tinymce. For instance, there is no need for changing colors,
backgrounds and many other things.
But this won't happen. Otherwise they would have done it right from the beginning. I
think the main problem is that many MS support engineers prepare their answers in
Word and want to paste that goobledigook.

---

IEFAQ: http://iefaq.info Newsgroup: microsoft.public.de.internetexplorer

Answer 2

Yes, there are problems with the editor. I agree that we are way too flexible in what we allow. It would ease implementation by limiting input but a lot of users actually complain we don't support enough mark up, which I don't really agree with. I don't know when this will happen or to what extent but scaling this back is certainly something we are considering.

---

Community Forums Program Manager

Answer 3

I would be happy (and I think the forums would be improved) if formatting was limited to bold/italic/underscore, bulleted/numbered lists, hyperlinks, and a way to enter code in a monospaced font that doesn't get messed up when the post is edited. Other options would be nice, but only if they can be implemented without breaking the basic functionality I described first.

Answer 4

Brent Serbus wrote on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 23:20:17 +0000:

a lot of users actually
complain we don't support enough mark up, which I don't really agree with.

tell them it's a support forum and not a forum to express themselves :-)
Thanks for the insight. I hope you can reduce that "functionality" soon.

---

IEFAQ: http://iefaq.info Newsgroup: microsoft.public.de.internetexplorer

Answer 5

Now the spammers do not even quote a reply. Guess there is no way to detect them when they are not using a previously detected spammer account.

---

---

The following is signature, not part of post
Please mark the post answered your question as the answer, and mark other helpful posts as helpful, so they will appear differently to other users who are visiting your thread for the same problem.
Visual C++ MVP

Answer 6

I made an IE add-in that reveals and highlights the hidden link.

The installer can be found at http://cid-1be894deaf296e0a.office.live.com/self.aspx/Public/MSDNForumBrowserHelper.zip

The source code is at http://cid-1be894deaf296e0a.office.live.com/self.aspx/Public/MSDNForumBrowserHelperSourceCode.zip in case anyone is interested.

Only works with 32bit IE.

Probably the forum can give a mode where colored link are highlighted (just execute a few extra lines of JavaScript).

---

---

The following is signature, not part of post
Please mark the post answered your question as the answer, and mark other helpful posts as helpful, so they will appear differently to other users who are visiting your thread for the same problem.
Visual C++ MVP

Answer 7

I made an IE add-in that reveals and highlights the hidden link.

The installer can be found at http://cid-1be894deaf296e0a.office.live.com/self.aspx/Public/MSDNForumBrowserHelper.zip

The source code is at http://cid-1be894deaf296e0a.office.live.com/self.aspx/Public/MSDNForumBrowserHelperSourceCode.zip in case anyone is interested.

Only works with 32bit IE.

Probably the forum can give a mode where colored link are highlighted (just execute a few extra lines of JavaScript).

---

---

The following is signature, not part of post
Please mark the post answered your question as the answer, and mark other helpful posts as helpful, so they will appear differently to other users who are visiting your thread for the same problem.
Visual C++ MVP

Another idea is to add this "feature" to the list of Feature Requests on the Wiki.

---

Ed Price a.k.a User Ed, Microsoft Experience Program Manager (Blog, Twitter, Wiki)

Answer 8

I think the spammers stopped after the forum added ref=nofollow, but their spams still remain there, some of them in locked forums. Just reported a few dozen of these.

Spammers now switched to signatures. Search "dofollow signatures" and you will find those spammer are still abusive forums for their benefit, but in a different way.

---

---

The following is signature, not part of post
Please mark the post answered your question as the answer, and mark other helpful posts as helpful, so they will appear differently to other users who are visiting your thread for the same problem.
Visual C++ MVP