Forums Registration

[kinvoya]

I'm not sure where to put this, sorry. Isn't it possible to make some kind of way to keep all the sex bots/drug advertisers, etc. from registering on the forum just to put a link on thier profile or post something self-serving?

If you look at the member lists it's just page after page of a nonCantr crapfest. I'm very tired of it.

I suggest that a potential forum participant be require to write one sentence about why they are joining. If you need someone to read them and give permission to join I will volunteer to do it.

[Nakranoth]

I cant remember, do we already have one of those anti-bot picture things durring sign up? (the whole, type what's in the box above thing)

[Chris Johnson]

Firstly , this is the probably the best place for your post

There is really very little we can do further than we currently do without a lot of effort . We have several anti-spam measures in play , firstly whilst visible to registered users the Membership list is not visible to search engines .
The current s/w we use has a bug (sorry a feature) where registered but not unconfirmed users do appear in the membership list - spammers use this to raise their search engine profiles without spamming the forum.

As it happens because of changes we have made inclusion in the membership list doesn't raise their profile as search engines ignore this on our site. There is very little we can do to stop them initially registering .

What we can do successfully, is automatically ban about 98% of spam posters on their first post - rejecting the post as well - We are now getting 7 or 8+ posts a day from registered users which are automatically banned - only one false positive out of about 200+ banned spam users post to our knowledge since we implemented this. The level of spam which does get through is extremly low now.



The membership list may look bad but 1) It doesn't really impact on the forum
2) The spammers don't get the credit they think they are getting
3) It includes a lot of users who have been banned as well

I believe the next planned release of the software we use should make the membership list itself only publicly include confirmed users so that should alleviate much of the problem

EDIT : and yes we do use one of those image things (a CAPTCHA is the technical term) but for various reasons these aren't 100% successful and the membership list reports those who signed up - which doesn't include those who passed the CAPTCHA

[kinvoya]

Thank you, Chris. That sounds good.

[N-Aldwitch]

Kinvoya, phpBB (this software) does offer a human alternative- but it requires trustworthy people, and definately people with a lot of time and, some level of self-taught psycho analytical intelligence- meaning, someone who can figure out if the person is a bot by reading their email and their signature etc, seeing if they fit the kind of person to join..
What would be used more than that would be google, in fact, checking to see if the same message has been posted before on other forums.

Before I got distracted with using big fancy words, there's an option Chris can turn on in the admin panel for this, and every time a new person registers, it would basically go through to you, and you can basically confirm/unconfirm whether it is a legitimate or fake registration, meaning, you basically are the wall between spammers and real users. A method of figuring out who's who as I said above is to check the username of the new user, google it, and see if there are an odd amount of users with the same name, and same post.

It is very, very slow though, and may discourage users, but it definately stops a lot of spam bots dead in their tracks if they have to wait for your confirmation.

[Chris Johnson]

That suggestion does absolutely nothing to solve the problem reported by Kinvoya - It just creates extra work for Admins.

As I said in my post ,phpBB adds prospective members to the membership list before any acceptance including the Admin confirmation method . Even if they are rejected at any later stage they still remain in the membership list.

Other methods we use are quite adequate to handle the majority of attempts to spam this forum .

[Nakranoth]

Another thought... don't let new users have "websites" for their first week... we don't need free advertising as players anyway.

[wichita]

A chinese forum I signed up for had a policy that all new users were subjected to a review period in which posts had to be reviewed by an administrator before they would be posted. This was to weed out the bots (as well as some of the more obnoxious troublemakers). After my first 5 or 6 posts my account was openend up and I was free to post immediately. I think it helped to keep it a rather nice and functional forum.


I am not sure if CD would be able to handle the volume we are getting now, but it might be a useful and welcome task to consider.

[Pie]

(as well as some of the more obnoxious troublemakers).

*looks suspitious*