An Immodest Proposal

[ed_montague]

Right, we've all seen the spambots and things floating through here like nobody's business. They've gone from posting random strings of words to deploying pornographic images, showing a marked increase in complexity. It is clear that, on this forum at least, the spambots are evolving. And that's terrible.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. If the number and complexity of these spambots continues on its present course, soon we will be flooded by spam, unable to discuss science fiction or our supreme love for Bahá'u'lláh, who through divine revelation announced the fulfillment of multiple religious eschatological conditions. Here is what I propose:

1) That moderators choose reliable members (i.e. those who have proved themselves to probably not be spambots) and give them the ability to delete posts and ban members as a moderating auxiliary force
2) The creation of a religious or secular holiday dedicated to the eradication of spam
3) Regularly-timed sacrifice of one or more members to appease the fickle Internet gods, in whose hands our lives are controlled

I understand that these ideas may not be popular. But in the face of the spambot flood, I am convinced they are necessary to save this forum.


[/satire]

[Trantor]

IMHO the main pornproblem is lack of quality.

*cough* scnr.



AFAIK all moderators are from the US, so there is no guard when they´re sleeping/working.
So it could be helpful to have "deputy"-admins from other timezones.

[Karst45]

I say, we throw the post in the water, if it sink it wasnt a boat, if it float it was, then we burn it!


Am for -5:00 GMT i suppose most other people are also from that time line.

[fredgiblet]

I mod until about 2AM PST since I work swing shift, I doubt anything will be up for longer than 6-8 hours

[Razor One]

The best option is to promote trustworthy members on different timezones to moderatorship. As long as they check in semi-regularly to mod things up, things ought to work out.

I'm on GMT +10. I moderate on another forum, so seeing spambots have the run of the forum is painful for me.

Yes yes, I'm plugging but I do have experience nuking spambots and I'm fairly familiar with the PhPBB backend... unless Arioch has some fancy buttons in there that he's modded in for the purposes of World Domination...

[Arioch]

It was interesting that the flow of spambots had reduced to almost nothing for nearly six months, then suddenly picked back up again. One wonders what the trigger was... whether it was a change in Google's CAPTCHA, or the appearance of new exploitable infrastructure, or whether the spammers just felt like it.

The spike should settle down a bit over time as domains and IP's are closed off. It's true that all of the current moderators appear to be on Pacific time, so I'll look into adding some from different zones to help keep the forum tidy overnight.

[Michael]

Well I live in the UK so I'm usually on when the rest of you are in bed

[Hālian]

I live in Eastern Daylight Time, am usually up for some part of the night, and am familiar with phpBB.

[Skaro]

There are other ways around this:

- impose a limit that you can only post a new thread after 10 posts
- Ask a question during registry only someone sentient could answer
- Have people fill in a random code during the first 10 posts.

[Michael]

There are other ways around this:

- impose a limit that you can only post a new thread after 10 posts
- Ask a question during registry only someone sentient could answer
- Have people fill in a random code during the first 10 posts.

The 2nd one is a very good one, something about the comic may be? prehapes a bit obscure so only those who actually read the comic, not just glance at it, will be able to answer?

[ed_montague]

There are other ways around this:

- impose a limit that you can only post a new thread after 10 posts
- Ask a question during registry only someone sentient could answer
- Have people fill in a random code during the first 10 posts.

The 2nd one is a very good one, something about the comic may be? prehapes a bit obscure so only those who actually read the comic, not just glance at it, will be able to answer?

Stop being sensible. Everyone knows only ridiculous and silly ideas will be implemented.

[Michael]

There are other ways around this:

- impose a limit that you can only post a new thread after 10 posts
- Ask a question during registry only someone sentient could answer
- Have people fill in a random code during the first 10 posts.

The 2nd one is a very good one, something about the comic may be? prehapes a bit obscure so only those who actually read the comic, not just glance at it, will be able to answer?

Stop being sensible. Everyone knows only ridiculous and silly ideas will be implemented.

[Trantor]

Stop being sensible. Everyone knows only ridiculous and silly ideas will be implemented.

Wha?? Here too?

[Karst45]

Stop being sensible. Everyone knows only ridiculous and silly ideas will be implemented.

How about retinal scan?

You take a picture of your eyes, send them to arioch, that will analyse it to determine if your human or a machine?

[Michael]

Stop being sensible. Everyone knows only ridiculous and silly ideas will be implemented.

How about retinal scan?

You take a picture of your eyes, send them to arioch, that will analyse it to determine if your human or a machine?

I tihnk that might only work with Terminators, but we can give it a try!

[Absalom]

I'm tempted to send in a picture of a webcam.

[Count Casimir]

I'm tempted to send in a picture of a webcam.

ROBOT!

(just kidding)

[javcs]

So, we just received another volley of spam.
Reported it of course, but really ... I have to wonder what changed.

Definitely in favor of a person-only filter, the identifying a character image is usually a solid way to thin out the herd, if it's feasible to implement.

[Michael]

Could ask a question like "how many times has Fire Blade smiled? Like REALLY smiled? A)0, B)2, C)5?" or something like that? (but not "how many times does Beryl smile" cos every other scene she's in has her smiling)

[Arioch]

I looked through the spambot countermeasures options in phpBB and it turns out there is indeed a Q&A CAPTCHA option (either it's new, or I just hadn't noticed it before). So I'll try that out.

I put in a list of really simple questions, with pretty obvious answers ("What is the color of Fireblade's Hair: Red, White, Black, or Blue?"); I don't want to make it difficult for people to answer, but it will be interesting to see how it affects the bots.