An Immodest Proposal

[Michael]

Should be interesting.

[Count Casimir]

Now I wish I was signing up again!

[Michael]

You could just creat a fake account and delete it after, then tell us what its like.....Wait was that another sensible answer?

[Arioch]

The new CAPTCHA seems to be doing its job... there haven't been any new spambot registrations since yesterday morning. The spam posts since were from bots that registered prior to that, but I just banned all the accounts registered since June with 0 posts, so hopefully that will take care of the rest.

[ed_montague]

Jolly good, old bean. Let us retire to the parlor for a spot of tea.

[Razor One]

Idea time.

On one forum where I registered, it was a requirement that new members make a single introductory post on a hidden subforum visible only to said new members. Once a mod came in, reviewed their post and verified they weren't a spambot, they'd be given posting privileges for the rest of the site.

It'd be fairly simple to replicate here.

1. Create a new user group for new members only.
2. Make an introductory subforum visible only to this group and moderators / admins. Unregistered users and regular members would not see the forum.
3. New members introduce themselves here. If they prove not to be spambot, promote to regular member group. Otherwise, delete and ban.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!

It shouldn't be too difficult to implement this solution on the backend... in fact, I think it can be done with about 15 minutes of work and a little testing to ensure that it does. It'll keep the public face of the forums clean and allow us all peace and quiet in the main forums.

The only issue I can forsee is if we had a sudden massive influx of new members that weren't spambots all suddenly registering... though I think that somewhat unlikely

[Arioch]

Requiring administrators to validate new users is sort of the "nuclear option" of anti-spam warfare; it's what you're forced to use when nothing else works. It requires a lot of attention and effort from the admins, and even under the best of circumstances it deters legitimate users from registering, because they can't post until goodness-knows-when an admin will happen along and validate them. The reason the forum moved here from Digital Webbing is because they used admin validation, and the admins got so backed up that they simply stopped validating new users.

For now, the new Q&A CAPTCHA appears to have stopped the bots cold (they were registering about 10 accounts per day, and there hasn't been a single new one since the Q&A went up), so I don't think there's any need at the moment to consider the nuclear option.

[Trantor]

..."nuclear option"...

And here i thought nukes were gooood.


scnr.

[Karst45]

..."nuclear option"...

And here i thought nukes were gooood.


scnr.

Mini pluto are cute! when you face an army of "can i come with you?"

[javcs]

Godsdammit.
They're getting in again.

[Arioch]

That was one that had registered in March. I'm freezing all the existing accounts with 0 posts, to take care of the sleepers. There were about two thousand of them.

If there are any lurkers here who registered but never posted and whose accounts got deleted, just create a new one.