# Uh, today I had a "post need approval"

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364>\
**Category:** Meta Discussion\
**Created:** [March 17, 2021, 9:01am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364 "2021-03-17T09:01:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sylvaticus](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/sylvaticus/32/203883_2.png) [@sylvaticus](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sylvaticus)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2021, 9:01am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364/1 "2021-03-17T09:01:20Z")

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Wondering what triggered it. It was a normal post with a couple of links to Julia packages.

 ![Screenshot from 2021-03-17 09-54-42](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/original/3X/3/7/374fba8bc545ad6e08e259938d4832bd1ec5263e.png)

I hope I haven’t lost it :-/

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**Author:** ![mbauman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mbauman/32/31082_2.png) [@mbauman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mbauman)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2021, 1:30pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364/2 "2021-03-17T13:30:36Z")

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It’s approved, of course. Sorry an overzealous filter caught you out.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sylvaticus](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/sylvaticus/32/203883_2.png) [@sylvaticus](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sylvaticus)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2021, 1:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364/3 "2021-03-17T13:31:48Z")

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Thanks…

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**Author:** ![dilumaluthge](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dilumaluthge/32/29283_2.png) [@dilumaluthge](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/dilumaluthge)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2021, 3:12pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364/4 "2021-03-17T15:12:13Z")

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Quite strange, given that @sylvaticus has Trust Level 3.

Maybe a bug in Discourse… if it happens again to the same user, it might be worth opening a bug report with Discourse.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dilumaluthge](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/dilumaluthge/32/29283_2.png) [@dilumaluthge](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/dilumaluthge)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2021, 3:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364/5 "2021-03-17T15:13:36Z")

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Also, maybe we can teach our spam filter that URLs that match something like this…

```julia
https:\/\/github\.com\/[\w]*\/[\w]*\.jl

```

… are generally not spam. Since many Julia packages will match that regex.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sylvaticus](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/sylvaticus/32/203883_2.png) [@sylvaticus](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sylvaticus)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2021, 3:14pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364/6 "2021-03-17T15:14:00Z")

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yeah… I was wondering what has triggered the filter…

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mbauman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mbauman/32/31082_2.png) [@mbauman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mbauman)\
**Post date:** [March 17, 2021, 4:02pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364/7 "2021-03-17T16:02:28Z")

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Yeah, we’ve long whitelisted all github links (and gitlab and [julialang.org](http://julialang.org)), and links themselves will only flag new posters. In this case, we had some old filters that were helpful for a time but aren’t needed anymore; I’ve removed them.

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**Author:** ![jbcaillau](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/jbcaillau/32/206767_2.png) [@jbcaillau](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/jbcaillau)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 6:19am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364/8 "2025-09-30T06:19:37Z")

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@mbauman FTR: similar issue below (solved by @stevengj)

> [@Julia discourse is preventing from posting a link](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-discourse-is-preventing-from-posting-a-link/39061/3):
>
> hi there. trying to post in the package announcement section (\*) from the @control-toolbox account (team work) instead of my @jbcaillau account, but the system prevents me to do so as there are links smiling_face_with_tear in the post text. i understand that this is a check on recent accounts. can anyone please give the @control-toolbox account enough trust so as to allow links into posts? cc: @gdalle (\*) new release of [OptimalControl.jl](https://control-toolbox.org/OptimalControl.jl)

i fully understand such restrictions for new accounts (including preventing them for posting messages containing links). may be _a posteriori_ checks instead of _a priori_ restrictions would make things more fluid 🤞🏽

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mbauman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mbauman/32/31082_2.png) [@mbauman](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mbauman)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 2:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/uh-today-i-had-a-post-need-approval/57364/9 "2025-09-30T14:31:09Z")

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We do both (and more). Links have typically been the primary currency of spammers, though, so they have been a very high value signal for us to restrict for new users.

I know it’s annoying to build up trust — especially when you _already_ know Discourse well. There’ve been some requests on discourse meta to allow for “vouching” in some manner, but that’s never taken off.

We unfortunately don’t see how many new uses (legitimate or not) try to create posts with links because the front-end simply disallows it. But we still do see lots of spam activity — dozens of posts a week. Some get caught by a handful of watchwords (and their post goes into an approval queue that only moderators see), some get caught by Discourse’s auto-flag bot (and it’s hidden before anyone sees it, pending mod approval), and yet others pass through those layers of defense and get seen and flagged by real folks here.

It is interesting, though, that we’re seeing a new class of spam in the past year: spammers are posting illegitimate customer support numbers — without bothering to use links. I suspect that this is attempting to poison LLM datasets.