No no no. You misunderstand. Before being accepted as a member with actual posting/messaging functionality, people were REQUIRED to post there. And they were instructed to post only short messages like, "I would like to join, please." Also, I'm relatively positive the thread was restricted to provisional members and mods, so there wasn't any newbie bashing.

Essentially, it was a streamlined moderator-approval system without the hassle of private messaging.

 

Is it just me or was DLP down for the last several hours? If so, related to this bot problem?

 

Likewise. What happened, guys?

 

Wasn't just you.

 

What happened was that the government attempted to sink DLP. But fuck those bitches, DLP is immortal. It will never die. D:

Anyway: An idea, which will probably be hugely annoying and rejected:

After everyone registers, have an mini-interview type thing. Force email verification, and add a note that all accounts must be manually approved. Set up dummy email accounts for that purpose and send a random list of ten questions that must be answered and sent back to one of them, a different email address each time.

 

We told them to "Remember the Fifth of November" and sent them on their way (to hell.)

 

Why did I miss this thread? D: So much gold.

Anyways, there's no way DLP will go under due to lack of donations. With our moneyz combined, we can do anything.

Also, people can't just apply to Hogwarts. Hogwarts selects those it deems worthy. More accurate title please!

 

Psh. I'm a bot. I've made it to, like, 1400 posts.

Bots are Salespeople sperm. Only the strongest make it.

But in other news, I'd happily contribute with some DLP Community Service, aka members who can donate a little time vetting prospective members quickly and simply - a PM or two, making sure they're real, welcoming them in, etc. No skin off my back, a quick 'Real' or 'No Response' to the staff.

And though obviously I'd be responsible and charming in the process, it could be fun. Not intro-forum fun, but some nonetheless.

 

Or there could be a long list of stupid questions made.

say..

What colour is white Napoleon's horse?

Spoiler

white

What direction is straight up?

Spoiler

up

What is the abbrevation of Dark Lord Potter?

Spoiler

DLP

With a thousand or so questions rotating it would be hard to brute force anything. A good and rather simple trick if there ever was one. And we could always add some new questions.

Alternatively, maybe there's a way to mess with the registration field xpath the way facebook does - generating it randomly, it would ramp up the difficulty of writing a bot somewhat, too. Of course the change might be hard to hardcore.
(If it is not, I'd suggest randomizing the layout and names of the registration fields, as well as putting them in differnt number of < tag > levels)

 

Questions with definite answers wouldn't really help. OCR is insanely simple to do anymore. Opinion based questions would work better, I suspect....

Of course, there is also the option of setting up an invite-only system that includes a link to a specific IRC channel to make requests...

 

Of all the postulated ideas so far, I think the invite one works the best. Maybe even make it so that they just need a code to register with, and have that code sitting in the topic of an IRC channel that they're directed to.

 

The problem with that, Ell, is that it uses a static code, and it wouldn't be hard to alter bots if someone was so inclined.

The invite system would let us keep it a bit more controlled, since all of the invite systems I looked into for another forum were all.dynamically created single use codes.

 

Seems I arrived at the right time, didn't even realise things had been shut down for awhile.

As a newbie, the "welcoming committee" messaging you and checking that you don't bleed binary is a good idea. It at least makes the forum seem friendly and Introductions seem to be closed (Any particular reason for that?). If a genuine person who just wants to lurk can't even be arsed to reply back with a "hi, just signed up to read some stories" message then it's hardly a loss if they are kicked out with the bots.

 

There are users who do similar stuff as it is, without prompting. When I registered the second time after returning to the site after who knows how long, I got a PM from Perspicacity welcoming me to the forum. Blew my mind, since I'd just read Dagger and Rose a short time before. He even gave me some prudent advice when I did the typical newbie's full retard impression(Posted a one-line upd8 so funneh! necro on a popular story).

It doesn't seem too difficult, and would reduce the number of spam bots. It should suffice for now, so long as registration doesn't see a massive uptick any time soon.

 

Uhhh.... Nope. *pokerface* No reason at all.

 

We don't talk about that.

 

NO OZ DON'T RUIN OUR MYSTIQUE

 

Oh god thats a terrifying image. Oz as Mystique from the crappy Xmen movies. I so hate you. Die in a fire. ;_;