I am not sure what to suggest, but my annoyance meter associated with the recent spamming of the forum is about to peg out.
Maybe it is time to upgrade to a more recent version of forum software that has more built-in protection against such nonsense?
Is trying to keep the forum accessible to machines running NEXTSTEP or OPENSTEP is still that relevant?
Something has to be done... Are more people needed to help manage the forum?
Hello : All it takes is one of these spammers to make a mess with in a few hours, why they do this is beyond me . The other problem is on the front end determining who is legitimate when they initially join and I've been fooled both ways where people are fake and appear real and real and its a judgement call . I'm currently despamming the ******* that posted several dozen messages about pills with in an hour , got it done Peace Rob
Thank you Rob, I know you are doing a splendid job! I was just wondering if there was a more automated way of screening the spammers without taking up more of your time...
being up to date is a good start. Is there any reason that prevents updates from happening?
Does this platform support moderation? Some systems require moderator approval for the first 5 posts or so of a new user... The posts dont appear until a moderator approves them.
Tim
That is a great idea! I'll check with Nitro! I sent him an email .
If there is anything i can do to help with the forums, like checking new users or reviewing posts, feel free to contact me. For me personally it is important that this forum remains accessible from within NeXTstep using good old OmniWeb.
I totally understand sir...
Maybe all it takes is for a "moderator" to exchange an email with an "applicant" before accepting them, if a built-in feature does not exist in this version of phpBB...
is the phpbb software being kept up to date??
I'm working with Rob on the spam issue and we'll do some things in the short term to discourage the perps. In the long term we're going to switch to different forum software since our current one has such a weak registration process. It's important for us to find forum software that works well on everything from an iPhone to OmniWeb. We'll keep everyone updated and thanks for your patience.
Please let me know if I can be of any help...
Quote from: "t-rexky"Please let me know if I can be of any help...
Will do, I appreciate that.
I spent 7 hours yesterday removing ~500 bogus spam accounts. Forum registration is disabled until the new forums are up and running. I'll be installing and testing new software today and through the week. We should have a new look soon with a robust ban hammer to deal with the spam.
Hello All: We have had the forums on lock down for registration for new members. I ran an unplanned "experiment" and opened registration for a few days. So to get an idea of the level of spammers, we are getting that are trying to register with the current system and captcha, you can go to members list and sort in descending order which shows newest and not yet activated members and see what happened it just a matter of days it's ridiculous . so I've set it up again so people can't register at all unless they email directly to us ,which is unfortunate because we'd like to have legitimate members Joining up . I'm deleting these new spamming accounts before they are activated and suspect a lot of them may be from the same group of people or bots spoofing registrations . I'm on it over and out. The mothership is only seen by actual forum members so if you have friends trying to register just pm or email me or nitro .
Has the attempt to update / modernize the forum software failed?
No the software has been updated but I think the failure is in the way form software registration processes with this particular package makes it way to easy to register. The goal of forums obviously is to attract and sustain new quality members. It seems the goal of spammers is to exploit the registration process and ruin forums because they want to advertise junk or just be a nuisance. I see this particular forum software package is PHP scripting and I'm guessing it would probably have some sort of API where you can write custom modules. I think 2 obvious ones would be a monitored one for the first 5 posts if the registrant throws out spam immediately they are gone. If they are on topic the level of permissions increases. At the front end I liked the idea a few simple qualifying questions about NeXT, hilst taking in to account newbies with an option to send an email to admin when registering if they are like a deer in the headlights, this should eliminate some but not all of the incoming potential registers , we just really want to add more NeXT members as we have a lot of great ones like you T-Rexy!. It is not like tons of people are seeking out to join the NeXT forums; it is a niche so obviously when we have over 100 signup in a matter of days, I'm taking a guess 98 are spammers. That being said I eliminated over 100 of the latest group that snuck in but were not qualified and it is obvious they were spammers.
Over at another forum we have had fairly good luck with the sortable Captchas signup anti-spam countermeasure. New user's posts go in a moderation queue, that also addresses the issue of trolls. But changing the user account from new user to regular user is done manually.