*looks at comment* I don't think that spammers have actually messed around with IJ's random journal feature. It's just that apparently they have a LOT of very active spammer journals that have not yet been dealt with by the Powers that Be over there. I don't know what the reporting process is there for spammer journals, but I would imagine that they actually take a dim view of them. I personally wouldn't consider the presence of spammer journals by itself something to scare me, but if there is a pattern of spammer journals not being taken care of by the people in charge of IJ, that would alarm me. I don't know how many people the IJ team has available to deal with spammer journals, and how quickly they can respond to complaints of spam. The comment you linked to was made today, so while it hasn't been responded to yet, I don't know if that means that they just haven't yet but will shortly, or if it's likely to sit there without anyone helping for a while. It doesn't look like IJ has picked up LJ's "Report a Bot" system, and it looks like they could really use it if they are having that sort of volume of spammers.
Is it possible for a spammer to register a journal at Dreamwidth? Well, if a spammer gets their hands on an invite code, or if a spammer buys a paid journal to sign up, or tries during an open registration period, a spammer could, and then could fill their journal full of exactly that sort of thing. However, if we find out that this has happened, we come down on them like a ton of bricks and that journal will no longer exist.
We have only found a very few spammer journals here ever, and while a few of them have sat biding their time for a while before they were discovered, once a spammer journal is discovered and reported, the Terms of Service team tends to act within the day. There are few enough spammer journals that we have not brought over the "Report a Bot" form either. If you do find a spammer journal, report it to the Terms of Service team immediately. You can do that by filing a support request in the Terms of Service category, or emailing abuse at dreamwidth dot org (let's not make it *easy* for screenscraping bots! ;-P) and someone will check it out and when they confirm it's a spammer, they'll take care of it.
So I do not think that the situation there, where all the random journal searches were pulling up spammer journals, could happen here, because we run a tighter ship.
no subject
Is it possible for a spammer to register a journal at Dreamwidth? Well, if a spammer gets their hands on an invite code, or if a spammer buys a paid journal to sign up, or tries during an open registration period, a spammer could, and then could fill their journal full of exactly that sort of thing. However, if we find out that this has happened, we come down on them like a ton of bricks and that journal will no longer exist.
We have only found a very few spammer journals here ever, and while a few of them have sat biding their time for a while before they were discovered, once a spammer journal is discovered and reported, the Terms of Service team tends to act within the day. There are few enough spammer journals that we have not brought over the "Report a Bot" form either. If you do find a spammer journal, report it to the Terms of Service team immediately. You can do that by filing a support request in the Terms of Service category, or emailing abuse at dreamwidth dot org (let's not make it *easy* for screenscraping bots! ;-P) and someone will check it out and when they confirm it's a spammer, they'll take care of it.
So I do not think that the situation there, where all the random journal searches were pulling up spammer journals, could happen here, because we run a tighter ship.