Easy way to stop spam here

[Ethan Winer]

Folks,

One simple way to stop all this spam is to not allow anyone to post a link until they've been a member for at least a week and have made at least five posts. This is what they do at the AVS forum (a home theater place I visit) and I've never seen spam there.

As long as the sign-up rules here make this policy very clear in big bold text, I imagine most of these morons will go on their way and spam elsewhere.

--Ethan

 

[dementedchord]

sounds right to me... tascam site has taken a big hit by instituting a $4 fee for joining... no spam.. but fewer users too... sad really...

 

[giraffe]

seems like an excellent idea, but has any one seen the right dragon for the job?

 

[fraserhutch]

Silly boy - you still believe in Dragons???

 

[NL5]

Dragon is pretty hands off - I even tried to buy the site from him since he doesn't really pay much attention to it, but no luck........

 

[TerraMortim]

I dunno, the spam doesn't bother me too much, as it's really a bit of comic relief. It's lame, but really pretty funny.

 

[TragikRemix]

i find some of the spam funny myself.

am i the only one that finds 'feed your dog VIAGRA from OUR SITE and watch it rape your SEXY RUSSIAN LESBIAN SiSTER LIVE on WeBCAm" funny?

 

[MessianicDreams]

The spame PISSES ME OFF no end.



But, of course nothing will be done about it...all in the name of "free speech"

 

[tarnationsauce2]

It's so rampant around here I wonder if the site owner gets a kickback.

 

[BRIEFCASEMANX]

I heard from a friend of a friend that he saw the site owner getting a kickback behind P.F. Changs and when he questioned the site owner his physical body dissolved into thin air and there was a creepy laugh with obvious reverb echoing about. My source is very trustworthy, so you can pretty much regard this as fact.

 

[TexRoadkill]

The spam comes from bots. Not people who read rules. If dragon gave a shit he could fix it.

Why don't people stop posting on the spam threads so they will drop?

 

[zed32]

Dragon is pretty hands off - I even tried to buy the site from him since he doesn't really pay much attention to it, but no luck........

did he actually say "no", or did he just ignore you?




and what is this thread doing in the Recording Techniques section!

 

[TakeFlight]

The spam comes from bots.

I agree. The common misconception is that an actual human being is posting these spam messages on forums. I'm sure there are some morons that do that, but the majority of spam on forums is automated. It's always amusing when people reply to these spam posts like as if the spammer is a human being and going to read it.

More on the topic here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_spam

 

[Ethan Winer]

If dragon gave a shit he could fix it.

I ASSumed that requiring one to supply an email address, with a further confirmation step sent to that email address, ensured only people can register. But I see your point. The next step is to use one of those GIF images with random numbers and letters the person must type.

Again, if nobody was allowed to post a link until they'd made five posts or whatever, that would stop this too.

--Ethan

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Again, if nobody was allowed to post a link until they'd made five posts or whatever, that would stop this too.

Not for long, for two reasons.

First, there's nothing to stop a bot from immediately posting 5 bogus posts and then the sixth "money" post. It'd be easy as hell to program, and it'd be increasing bogus board messages by 600%. As soon as it becomes a popular tactic used by more than one or two boards, the bots will adjust and flood these boards with bogus traffic.

Second, since such functionality is not (I don't believe) a standard feature of the vBulletin BBS software used for this board, it would required writing custom PHP code modifications to parse messages for URL links and check against the user message counter. It doesn't look like anyone here is going to go to that much of a bother anytime soon.

If we want to get rid of spam, there's one best way to do it. Turn off our TVs, turn off our computers, and get our asses back into the real world.

G.

 

[danny.guitar]

I ASSumed that requiring one to supply an email address, with a further confirmation step sent to that email address, ensured only people can register. But I see your point. The next step is to use one of those GIF images with random numbers and letters the person must type.

Again, if nobody was allowed to post a link until they'd made five posts or whatever, that would stop this too.

--Ethan

Like Glen said, if the program can already post once automatically it can just as easily post 5, 10, or a thousand times.

Best option is to enable the GIF images with random numbers and letters like you said. It's a single option in vBulletin that takes about 2 seconds to enable.

The database could also use a cleanup. That can be done automatically either through a simple PHP script or by logging into PHPMyAdmin panel and clicking 'optimize tables'. That would probably speed things up a lot on the site and get rid of a lot of errors, especially with trying to post new threads and getting blank pages.

In short, in about 10 minutes the owner could really improve the site. Especially considering this is one of the most popular home recording forums on the internet.

 

[foreverain4]

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