In case you missed it, early this morning DKos was under attack by a group of spammers. Or maybe a single spammer with multiple accounts. They were posting the usual "Call 1-800-XXX-XXXX for Microsoft (or other computer-related sites) Assistance (or Tech Support.) These "diaries" were posted from several different brand new user accounts. We had well over 50 of them coming in one after the other. They filled the entire recent page for a while, burying other diaries.
Additionally, bojoing didn't seem to stop them. One spammer, James88, was bojoed early on but his account continued to post diaries. And James88 wasn't the only one who got crossboned out but continued to post. Zombie newbie diarists unable to be destroyed.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Many people who tried to HR the diaries quickly ran out of donuts. Even when the diaries had all tags removed and replaced with a "spam" tag, they stayed on the recent list for a long time.
Many Cossacks posted ideas and suggestions as to how to remedy the problem. Some were: restricting new users to a single diary/day, adding a "delete" or "hide" button to make those diaries invisible till the spam bot eats them, increasing the number of donuts each TU gets, sending posts from non-TUs to a queue for review before posting, have a means to alert the help desk directly when something like this happens, etc.
Does anyone have any follow up on this situation? Can it happen again?
Perhaps the Help Desk can comment and explain what happened and discuss fixes and other options.