Subject: PSA: AO3 seems to be under a wave of spambots right now.
Author:
Posted on: 2022-12-06 09:54:31 UTC
Found a couple reviews on my works which are some kind of weird code and a link - of course, if you see any of those Dont. Click. it.
They might be just ways to get traffic and revenue to sites paying for it, but they might also hide all kinds of scams and malware.
This time, it's images of "wand colored pencils".
--Ls
Did anyone see an announcement about this? I didn't. I assume this is for better readability, same with Discord's recent font change, but it would be nice to be told these things.
And I don't like this font. Discord's is much nicer. {= /
ETA: Proof I'm not imagining it. Here's a screencap I took back in June, and here's one I took today.
~Neshomeh
I never saw any announcements, either.
—doctorlit wonders whatever is wrong with simple Times New Roman
I asked what was up on Community Central. Apparently the font is called Rubik, and Fandom has been using it for a while, but the font itself has been updated to a new version. With, as far as I can tell, crappy kerning.
So that sucks.
If I can get enough brain juice flowing this weekend, I'll see if I can improve it by changing the font size and/or weight in our wiki's CSS, and if that doesn't work I'll try switching to a different font. Probably Helvetica, since that's next on the font-family list and should look familiar.
(Times New Roman is fine in print, but as a serif font, it's harder to read on a screen than sans-serif fonts like Helvetica and Arial.)
~Neshomeh
Seven of them, wow.
Was excited for a hot second since it was for stories in a fandom with like... two people in it where I personally am responsible for 60% of the existing fic, but alas, I can't have nice things. XD
But yes, mark as spam immediately! Good to bring this to attention.
I enabled comment moderation on all of my stories for the time being - while disabling guest reviews would ensure that spambots won't be able to even try, it is a nuclear solution that also prevents legitimate guest reviews.
(throws cans of SPAM at spambots)