bots

[AppleQueso]

Not sure where to put this, but is there any way we can ask snowcone nicely to maybe implement some stronger anti-bot measures? Often I'll log in late at night and feel overwhelmed by the flood of bot posts constantly. Just now I deleted no less than 6 posts and banned at least 2 bots. It's getting kinda out of hand.

[tiktektak]

Afaik there were allready stricter bot measurements implemented some time ago.

Before that and before there were Forum admins the bot problem was much much worse!

It could be the problem that the stuff which gets through now are no bots but real people who do such spam shit for a living. Not much you can do about real persons when it comes to securing the registration process except for making the site invitation only.

[AppleQueso]

Perhaps disable guest viewing on the forum (as in only registered users can see the forum)? That'd prevent the forum from being indexed in google searches and whatnot, might curb a few of these bots.

[xxdeszarasxx]

well there is not much that can be done about it, people will allways register just to spam/advertice their stuff, bot's cant register yet but people can, i used to be a Super Moderator on the Jowood/Phenomic Spellforce Spanish/English boards and there it is much more worse because of the bigger community and they still have not been able to stop the spammer, all can be done against it is keep banning them.

Greets,

xXDeszarasXx

[Grumbleduke]

Its certainly picking up pace of late. I just banned 3 who had posted about 15 times between them in the space of a minute.

[Arseen]

Yeah I noticed that! 

Posted to NES topic, while doing that whole recent post list lit u in blue.

[UncleBob]

I vote against restricting the board to registered users.  Such a move would only risk alienating new members to the community.

I'd rather delete a few posts and ban a few bots than risk losing one new member.

[Arseen]

I would still suggest limiting new users posts to say 1 a day, until newbie has been posting a while, then admins could lift the restriction.

[AppleQueso]

manual account activation?

at least then we could do a quick google search on suspicious looking emails/ips/etc

[tiktektak]

manual account activation?

at least then we could do a quick google search on suspicious looking emails/ips/etc

Nice thought but this a lot of work. I'm mod/Admin in another forum here in austria and I get many such activation mails a day. Too many.

[xxdeszarasxx]

I think UncleBob is right, while Arseen's method might be ok it would still risk newer members joining the community.

and tiktektak is allso right, there is alot of work in manual account activation.

[juan0tron]

I was actually going to start a topic about this a while ago, I just never felt a real push to do it. I don't mind deleting so many spam posts though. I feel like I wouldn't be doing my job otherwise. I also would not want to neglect any genuine new user. A lot of people lurk and join because of our community, not only our covers. Some people see strict quality standards as intimidating and without friendly people behind them, they'll just see it as too much work.

[AppleQueso]

Gah

hopefully snowcone will chime in.

I guess what we do kinda works but it's still a pain in the ass.

[satoshi_matrix]

I'm with AppleQueso on this. I've deleted my share of bot postings too and it's all rather bothersome.

[juan0tron]

By the way I'm surprised Arseen isn't a forum admin yet. If one of us don't catch a post when it goes up, Arseen's email is usually the first in my inbox