23 replies to this topic

[Soul]

We need to do something to stop these friggen people from posting pron links here it is becoming annoying to me even after said persons topic is deleted that person or someone with that crap comes abck and makes another topic for this crap any ideas to stop it?

Cause I'm pertty sure there are others who arn't liking this.

[Blodo]

We can't do anything against bots at this moment except turning off guest posting.

[prophet of the pimps]

add some filters. and block the registration of .ru emails from being used during registering of an account.

Also filter out the use of the words like Viagra, pills and other common key words from the user name.

Trust me. i have put around 10 filters last week and not even a single bot has gotten through since then.

[Athena]

They usually guestpost. At ES guestposting is disabled.

Solutions are being looked into. It would be helpful, if you happen to see such a post/topic feel free to tell me on MSN if I'm there or use the 'report post' button if you do not see someone with mod powers online at the time being.

[Blodo]

Just disable the goddamn guest posting finally. As always "solutions are being looked into" meanwhile everybody does nothing. Disable the guest posting for starters. Then a "solution can be looked into".

Banning registration of emails from the .ru domain is IMHO a retarded way of dealing with the problem especially when the bots don't register.

[chemical ali]

Just turn off guest posting yes, but of course no one listens to us admins or staff in the network leaders who are on on magic mushrooms in cloud land.

[Mastermind]

We've been over this a dozen times or more. Guest posting has enough use that turning it off is not an option except in the case of extreme spam attacks.

[Hostile]

I concur with MM, turning off guest posting is only used as temporary defense mechanism against bot spam attacks.

[chemical ali]

Bots can register on some places, which is why you have to put in like a alpanumerical code to register on some forums now.

[Blodo]

If turning off guest posting is not an option then how about we come up with an option? Putting in confirmation code to guest posting has been discussed for ages. That also didn't get done. So lets turn off guest posting until it is done. This IS an extreme case.

[MSpencer]

You've all got a few choices:
1. Alphanumeric code. Not too hard to code.
2. Keep guest posting off, something which has obviously gotten quite a few people miffed in the past, enough that now any suggestion is immediately batted down by ignoring the person who posted the blasphemous thought forever.
3. Widen the number of moderators. Even by giving staff members global mod priveledges like they once had would triple your coverage over the boards, thus vastly decreasing the time between post and deletion.
4. Filter things, thus decreasing the number of available usernames or users (.ru emails? Well you just eliminated Russia right there...)
5. Ban more IPs. Utterly futile.

[Athena]

Regarding point 3: It rarely happens that spam stays there for more than several hours. I think we got most of it covered really tbh.
Regarding 2: This issue has been discussed multiple times. Should some spam bots mess it up for several real people who just want to make a post or two, should they pay for it?

And 6. More people could use the report post button or contact a moderator.

[MSpencer]

In a perfect world...

The fact of the matter is, people are getting annoyed, and I myself am also getting quite annoyed by the fact that this "final solution" is being trumpeted around by all of you in such a vague manner, and we haven't heard a word about it! We're supposed to be Network Staff and you're not telling us anything, and all over the place bots are taking over trying to sell us viagra. Maybe we'd all feel a little more assured, and would be completely content to sit around here with the official agenda of the day being "Do nothing, and mind your business" if we had somewhat of a clue of what's going on, and what's being done!
This shrouded in secrecy thing is not working well for anyone.

[Blodo]

Why don't we start looking for a more permanent solution? We can't delete spam posts forever. Just disable the goddamn guest posting or at least finally install that alphanumeric code that everyone was babbling about a while back. I seriously have no idea how BOTH of these cannot be done.

BTW I completely agree with Spencer. I don't feel like network staff anymore.

Edited by Blodo, 16 August 2006 - 11:30 PM.

[Athena]

I already said, we are working on it. If you have a question regarding those solutions, post in the staff forum or contact one of the leaders or admins. You are mistaken if you think this doesn't annoy us. You have to put up with viewing it for some moments. I have to watch it and delete the crap. If you think for a moment that that does never annoy me, you're wrong. There is no point in starting about disabling guestposting again. It was used as a temporary measure and that's it.

[Blodo]

How are you working on it? For god sake there are five solutions posted straight off the top of our heads. Just continue with one instead of outright ignoring all staff. Disable guest posting for now and when MM (or whoever) finishes the alphanumeric code thing and it gets integrated then we can turn guest posting back on. For gods sake it's what I said some months ago it's 30 minutes of work.

[Mastermind]

How are you working on it? For god sake there are five solutions posted straight off the top of our heads. Just continue with one instead of outright ignoring all staff. Disable guest posting for now and when MM (or whoever) finishes the alphanumeric code thing and it gets integrated then we can turn guest posting back on. For gods sake it's what I said some months ago it's 30 minutes of work.

Yes, generating CAPTCHA images is easy. It is the IPB integration that is painful.

[MSpencer]

I really don't care about spambots. Other people do. I can look through the threads, I normally ignore threads by guests.
The fact of the matter is, other people are quite annoyed by the damn little buggers, and they're getting everywhere. This solution has been touted around in no less than ten threads, and network staff have not been told one thing about it (Much like many other things, as it seems all the important questions regarding anything but the petty position of two or three buttons on the main page are left to admins). We used to hear everything, now we're being told less than hosted... Obviously, the logical progression is that if we haven't heard about it, and it's not floating around anywhere except in casual mentions for everyone to hold on while we openly do absolutely nothing, then it does not exist, or is not in a stage to exist in the near future. We're being told nothing around here, if each and every one of you wants to keep up the information black hole, well you can just go ahead and delete the staff group because we're getting nothing done except prolonging a pointless debate about an equally pointless facelift.
I remember when Detail and Tom were in charge. We used to get information about everything going on, we were talked to about advising the leadership, we were that cabinet of opinions that the admins would go to when they wanted to do something. That point has been completely eclipsed by the bureaucracy. We're not even contacted about our opinions, we're completely left in the dark, and whenever we post something worthwhile about changing something, it's ignored. Perhaps someone should take the time to realize that the people in the staff forum aren't there for kicks, there's always a chance that someone might have a different viewpoint than you, and experiences that can really aid in making a decision.
Of course nobody would know that, because we're invisible.

[Banshee]

Why don't we start looking for a more permanent solution? We can't delete spam posts forever. Just disable the goddamn guest posting or at least finally install that alphanumeric code that everyone was babbling about a while back. I seriously have no idea how BOTH of these cannot be done.

BTW I completely agree with Spencer. I don't feel like network staff anymore.

Stopping guest post is no permanent solution.

We have been looking for a permanent solution for months already. We have adopted several measures to reduce them (believe it or not), but none of them are preventing all bots. Some of these bots are quite advanced. They can defeat CAPTCHAs, they can use public proxy server or machines of infected users or servers, they can pretend they are using browsers like IE or Firefox, etc...

[Blodo]

There is a pretty effective solution and that is a hard to break captcha. Disabling guest posting is a temporary solution, do I have to say that a thrid time? I think it is better than sitting around with our thumbs up our asses and whining about how we can't be arsed to integrate a solution into Revora.