Why was registration closed before? I haven't been around a lot lately, did I miss something?

 

An in-flux of too many bots, resulting in spams.

 

If the newest batch is any indication, more rigorous measures have to be taken.

 

Indeed. Far be it from me to complain since I know roughly jack-shit to do about it, but already the bots are necroing the library threads. It's an annoyance for those of us who pretty much only use the New Posts feature to browse DLP, and I'm betting it's a real pain in the ass to the Mods having to endlessly delete that shit.

Probably more of the knowing roughly jack-shit thing here, but does this translate to Lens of Sanity was banned along with Saint's Felony, and if so that's because why? Same IP address? Other??

And if I'm about to get the "I'm not your answer man, bitch, go look it up," then at least give the intertubes dumbass a link, hmm?

 

We have secret methods to detect those who post dupe accounts. These are secret. And they work for bananas. And are capable of flying.

 

Probably the same IP, yeah. Some folks share the same IP address depending on their ISP, and I've heard of other users on other sites being blocked because of the actions of one particular asshat who they shared the address with unknowingly.

 

Honestly though, I don't even understand the guy's reasoning. How many of the spam bots and retards are going to be donating anyway?

 

One of the more extreme measures I've seen is moderated initial posts - that is, the first three (or five, or whatever) posts a user makes go into limbo until they're approved or rejected by a moderator.

It would work in this case, but man, that would suck for site staff.

 

Perhaps there could be a security question that they have to answer correctly, something like "What is the meaning of life?" If they can't answer that, we probably don't want them anyway.

 

I don't think it should be a question that can be answered by a number

Maybe force e-mail confirmation of the first three or five posts a new user makes? It should defeat pretty much any out-of-the-shelf spambot script.

 

Ravenclaw shared with me at least one of the secret methods. Now Snarf and I can suddenly become triplets with a third user that is Definitely Not The Heir.

Jokes aside, I'm hoping that there are no more bots incoming. I hate it when DLP is down. I don't get to read all of Skelemort's theories of magic.

 

Just the first post is sufficient in my experience; the only time you'll have a spammer take the time to write a real post before starting to spam is if it's high-effort personally-targeted hate-spam rather than just the usual advertising junk. Moderating them is really boring, but it was about 15 minutes per day for me for a forum that got ~500 spam posts per day until I managed to break the automated registrations.

 

I'd imagine the easiest way would just have admin verification of new members. Though, this will be tedious, it's probably not much worse than dealing with deleting bot posts all day long.

 

I'm so glad this wasn't around when I signed up.
I'm a fucking terrible poster.

 

...I must've accidentally mixed 1 part Midknight into your drink you were sipping on when you were reading this, damn bro. Good show, carry on I approve.

 

It doesn't always work. My home forum EOCF (Extreme Overclocking Forum, though it should be called Extreme Underclocking Forum) has the same security question implemented, but spammers still get through.

The forum owner admitted that he made a honey pot forum using the same address. In fact, we didn't see any spam for over two years until Apple released the iPhone 5...then spammers came out in force.

Raven, if you're curious what I mean, I've included a couple screenshots for you... because you can't see that thread unless you're a regular member.

Or alternatively, you can do what XS (xtremesystems) does, have the staff be the one to validate each account. Just a thought.

 

IIRC, the Mugglenet forum had an interesting way of weeding out bots that might be useful for DLP. It required all new members to post a short message in a specific thread stating their intent to be a contributing member. Only when it had been reviewed and accepted would they gain posting access to the rest of the site.

I don't know if that's manageable given our numbers, but it seemed like a pretty effective system.

Just spitballin here.