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| Good idea? |
| Yes |
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25% |
[ 3 ] |
| No |
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75% |
[ 9 ] |
| I don't think spam is such a problem |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
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| Total Votes : 12 |
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Message |
cmxflash
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Joined: 11 Dec 2004
Posts: 872
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 Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:37 pm Post subject: Spam on the forum |
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I've noticed a lot of spam on the forum lately. Are those automated messages or is some sad person sitting and posting them manually?
Also, I think Aprelium could get rid of most of the spam by manually accepting every user who regiseres. In that way, they wont be able to post until at least one day after they register. Most spammers would get bored by having to wait. |
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AbyssUnderground
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Joined: 31 Dec 2004
Posts: 3855
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| Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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I voted no since it stops the more legitamate users from posting actual problems of which they may consider urgent. Its also extra un-needed workload for aprelium.
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aprelium
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Joined: 22 Mar 2002
Posts: 6800
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| Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 3:54 pm Post subject: Re: Spam on the forum |
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cmxflash,
These are desperate people who are doing everything manually (regostering, entering the captcha data, waiting for the email, clicking the activation link, and posting their pitiful messages).
So enabling manual validation of new user accounts will be of no help since we cannot tell at a first glance if they are spammers or not.
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Anonymoose
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Joined: 09 Sep 2003
Posts: 2192
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| Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 11:26 pm Post subject: |
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We have a fairly high profile forum with no captcha or email validation required for sign up and no spam. How? First post(s) moderation. No spam is ever visible to the general users of the boards, the few pieces we do get are removed by moderators before there is any chance for them to be indexed by search bots or viewed by users. I've mentioned it before, but I don't know how well supported most PHPBB hacks are - in the past Aprelium have seemed very dubious about implementing any of them... It's the only fool proof solution.
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hc2995
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Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 644
Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2006 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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well there are hacks to stop spam bots but i agree, i would set it to admin registration (after 24 hours a spammer will just give up lol)
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p3
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Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 615
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 4:26 am Post subject: |
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| Anonymoose wrote: | | We have a fairly high profile forum with no captcha or email validation required for sign up and no spam. How? First post(s) moderation. No spam is ever visible to the general users of the boards, the few pieces we do get are removed by moderators before there is any chance for them to be indexed by search bots or viewed by users. I've mentioned it before, but I don't know how well supported most PHPBB hacks are - in the past Aprelium have seemed very dubious about implementing any of them... It's the only fool proof solution. |
Most phpBB hacks, particularly those that are considered "official", are fairly well supported by their authors. If not, there are various folks around who are generally willing to support for little or no charge.
I can see Aprelium's dislike of running a modified phpBB (makes upgrading a pain in the arse), but, just the same, phpBB is designed to be customized. That would also require very little work, assuming a few moderators were appointed. IIRC, that's been discussed more than once.
As for the topic, I would say "Yes" to cmx's point. If it is that urgent, maybe you should purchase X2 -- for the priority tech support. |
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loloyd
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Joined: 03 Mar 2006
Posts: 435
Location: Philippines
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 6:34 am Post subject: |
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It's good that this spam problem is finally being discussed here. Amongst all annoyances, spam figures consistently at the top of the list.
I'm not a comfortable expert at PHP but I have this silly idea that may also apply to the server itself. My webserver at home running on Abyss also suffers from similar spamming problems.
Maybe Aprelium can add an Abyss feature that logs POST-ed content-entities. This information can be dumped in another ".log" file. This would help me (and you) figure out ways on how to, at the very least, address this problem. Maybe installing a redirect function in Abyss for an XML-ed list of banned "words" such as:
fioricet
f*or*cet
texas poker
texas p*o*k*e*r
CENSORED
v*gr*a
would also help. I am aware that this creates another threading/performance overhead but, at least, this only happens when this feature is turned on.
Edit: after some thought, i think this should be applied only on Content-type: text/* POSTs only with a max-length monitor.
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Last edited by loloyd on Thu Aug 24, 2006 6:39 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Mikor
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Joined: 21 Aug 2006
Posts: 144
Location: Hull, England
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 6:39 am Post subject: |
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I was thinking - just edit the post function to block posts with more than 5 urls.
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loloyd
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Joined: 03 Mar 2006
Posts: 435
Location: Philippines
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 6:51 am Post subject: |
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| Mikor wrote: | | I was thinking - just edit the post function to block posts with more than 5 urls. |
Please note that some helpful threads actually have more than 5 urls in them, like the first post in http://www.aprelium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3806.
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Mikor
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Joined: 21 Aug 2006
Posts: 144
Location: Hull, England
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 6:52 am Post subject: |
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| loloyd wrote: | | Mikor wrote: | | I was thinking - just edit the post function to block posts with more than 5 urls. |
Please note that some helpful threads actually have more than 5 urls in them, like the first post in http://www.aprelium.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3806. |
5 url's not in an allowed sites list?
ie: aprelium.com, abyssunderground.co.uk, ect dont count
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aprelium
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Joined: 22 Mar 2002
Posts: 6800
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| Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 12:30 pm Post subject: |
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There are a lot of good suggestions here.
The first post moderation could be a great solution for now. But as many guessed, it's PhpBB upgrading that will become complex because of such a module. Anyway, we're going to reconsider our position about that.
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loloyd
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Joined: 03 Mar 2006
Posts: 435
Location: Philippines
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| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:32 am Post subject: |
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On a related note, I can see why spammers are targetting this forum. It has become popular from (among) search hits and bots (by Google and Yahoo). This tells me that some respectable wealth of useful information must be found within these forum pages :).
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