Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Suggestions Box => Topic started by: Entsuropi on April 23, 2006, 08:20:21 PM
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Could we please have more anti-spam protections? Either some controls on registration (such as image verification) or controls on how many posts a user has to make before he can start his own thread (generally useful..).
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I heartily second this. The ones posted today were...um...yucky.
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we have to upgrade to a new forum to get said protections but we can't upgrade since no forums has a leveling system (so says Fell). I've all ready got a new forum integrated with the site on a test server but have not had the time due to work and school to code a leveling system. I'm done with school in a week so I'll be able to finish it then.
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and stop your whining!
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/me whines.
:'(
But, why don't we just have you admin. guys on all the time, and all posts have to be approved by you, it will only add a fe minutes to each post, and we won't have to deal with any spam!!
:D
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pay me and I'll protect you from spam.
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You got the wrong idea, I don't care that much.
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Today I made a small tweak to the registration page. It now has a select box that asks if you really want to register, defaulted to No. This should prevent bots from automatically registering. However, I have a feeling that most of the spam isn't from bots, it's from people who are paid to act like bots.
If that's the case, they'll probably just switch the box to yes. If we don't see a decrease in spam posts/registrations, we may switch to a system that only allows new posts after a member has posted 10 times (for example).
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does the current forum allow for that?
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You realize that they might just start spamming in already started threads that are loosly related to whatever they are spamming for.
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Yes, I do.
Today is the first morning in a LONG time I've come in and not found any new spambot registrations. Seems like this may have helped a bit, at least for now.
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*crosses fingers*
Default "no" checkbox...I like it!
Since this is such an old forum, I'm guessing the bots are just following a template... I doubt someone would bother to rewrite a bot specifically to target this forum, since it's so low-profile. But if it really is live human beings...*shrug*
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It seems the mail.ru ones, at least, are human beings. They figured out the problem pretty quickly and are registering again. Ugh.
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Bastards. We should go pro-active on them. I bet if we put our collective intelligences together we could come up with a DOS attack against them or something equally annoying.
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Or we could just send you to invade russia as was the plan 4 years ago (none of us believe you were in Pakistan and Iraq but instead training to be a super solder designed to take over russia). You're such a relic of the Cold War.
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Does this forum have a setting to make all forum registrations have to be approved by a human being?
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Maybe, but I'm sure not going to be the one roped into doing something like that.
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any way to block all .ru accounts?
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The example it gives is for specific email addresses, but I put "mail.ru" in there anyway, just to see.
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Looks like the protection has worn off. I know TWG is really small, but it seems almost like someone saw the added protection and compensated his bots programming in response.
I recommend deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as our escalating response.
I dislike ookla's suggestion; anything that makes life too hard for new members to join is just asking to kill any potential growth of the forums. Image verification really is my suggestion, but I have no idea whether that is a plugin available for the TWG forum software.
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except it seems to be real people,... so image verification might be a problem
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Yeah, I'm actually pretty convinced these are coming from people being paid to hit forums and post spam. We'll work on more anti-spam features in the future.