Improved forum defense against spammers

[IdeasVacuum]

Ah, limiting the forum to license holders would be counter-productive. Before I even had the trial version I checked-out the forum, so I think Fred may lose potential customers. The main target has to be the bots.

Edit: Would be good to identify genuine license holders under their forum name though.

[C64]

Edit: Would be good to identify genuine license holders under their forum name though.

Yes, and then an option for us to filter posts so we only see genuine license holders. The spammers are foiled (since nobody reads their posts), and newbies can still lurk to check out the support. Win-win!

[LuCiFeR[SD]]

solve the problems of spam is easy
must validate the new members by hand!
I do this on my forum, and no problems!

New members must write me before the validation
more
my forum is invisible to the no-members


ps : Fred could provide validation based on the licenses

disappeared hackers of Purebasic on the forum

Which is fine when you have a really small userbase... but when you have potentially hundreds of people signing up every week, doing that manually would just be a nightmare.

Actually, I do agree with the licence validation to a degree. As long as potential customers can see what they are missing by not purchasing PureBasic. and a quick hack using the GD library to display the stuff in code tags to non validated users as an image would stop them just trawling the forums for code too.

But it is all a moot point really... none of these features exist, and I can't see Fred and co. implementing them.

[Marlin]

Please, no unneeded restrictions!

Some light touch features to keep spam bots outside,
could be OK, but it should not be overdone!

F.e. login should not be more complicated than it is now.

Some bots are even good!

Think about the possibilities to find PureBasic solutions
via search engines.
This contributes a lot to the value of this forum!

It would not be possible without the bots of the search engines
going through the contents...

[Kukulkan]

Only a quick idea for a community-driven solution:

Count the number of clicks to the SPAM-button and the number of views (allready counted). If the SPAM counter exceeds more than 50% of the views-counter, simply mark this automatically as spam.

Assuming that 11 users of the first 20 hits will klick on the SPAM button, the post is gone automatically...

Kukulkan

[c4s]

@Marlin
Well, but the search engine spiders (!) don't need to login and post spam links.

@Kukulkan
I have to admit that I don't click on the report button anymore because that annoys me even more. They simply shouldn't be here. A custom question during registration could heavily reduce the count of automated bots...

[Marlin]

@Marlin
Well, but the search engine spiders (!) don't need to login and post spam links.

Agreed.

[Rings]

don't make me even unemployment.
i like deleting posts and banning users.

Vote For Spam today !!!

[Marlin]

don't make me even unemployment.
i like deleting posts and banning users.

Vote For Spam today !!!

Well, in general I like solutions like suggested in the venus project better
than needing problems to have employment in order to have the income required...,
but, if you even like to do what you're doing, I tend to accept it.

[C64]

Well, the "!" button is totally useless now, because the spammers are getting around it by posting multiple times in the same thread. It's too annoying for us to sit there and click "!" for 10 or more posts in a row, and wait for the forum server to respond with its "thank you" message after each click. Time to come up with something better.

[Marlin]

Well, the "!" button is totally useless now, because the spammers are getting around it by posting multiple times in the same thread. It's too annoying for us to sit there and click "!" for 10 or more posts in a row, and wait for the forum server to respond with its "thank you" message after each click. Time to come up with something better.

Its no big difference if those disruptors ad one garbage post to a thread or multiple ones,
except it looks worse at first sight.

The purpose of those accounts will easily be obvious even to the ones cleaning up.
-> The account will be locked down and all of its posts removed.

Btw. it seems to come from rather few accounts, created a few weeks ago, iirc.

[skywalk]

My 2 cents...
Besides Rings' hand to hand combat.

1. Ask randomly generated goofy questions at signup.
"Hey new user, w h a t i s 3 - 2?"
Add random spaces to the question.
A canned bot routine would have to adapt and that means only a select few get in.

I am not sure what a foreign language users questionnaire looks like?
Are all users requests in English?

2. Lock stale user accounts (however you want that defined?)
A locked user can request via email to be unlocked.

Spam will never go away fully and its presence is a compliment to the popularity of PureBasic.
We should not disappoint them by failing to minimize the intrusion cleverly.