Rocks'n'Diamonds

You have all seen these SPAM posts the last days -- only today I deleted about ten or twenty of them. Therefore I disabled posting as guest, and I hope that it brings more good than bad. :-o

What do you think about it?

BTW: I re-enabled guest-posting for this specific sub-forum so that you can also discuss this as guest! (Anything else would be unfair, I think.)

I think that it is a very good decision, and I can add that I have deleted about 7-10 SPAM-posts today myself.

I also think that in the future, it could be continued to have guest-posting enabled for this specific forum section, just in case... Of course, if there will be massive spam in this section, I might change that thought..

Indeed it is a hard decision, but I think the amount of spam will be massively reduced now. And besides, I think most people are used to logging in by now. And if they aren't... well, then they'll have to be used to it

The most negative thing with this decision, according to my point of view, was that when I saw there was a new post in the Announcement section, I thought there was a new pre-release out...

Holger wrote:What do you think about it?

Fine with me.

That's right for me too.

A couple of questions: the visual confirm is only for registering, right?
So there could be a bot out there that spams in that way, isn't it possible?

Could we put a visual confirmation for posting as guest?
It would allow "manual" spamming but would at least avoid bots.

Since I'm not an expert about this stuff - I'm really far from being so - I must ask also: am I messing around?

> A couple of questions: the visual confirm is only for registering, right?

Yep, right!

> So there could be a bot out there that spams in that way, isn't it possible?

It's not only possible -- I'm 99,9% convinced that exactly this is the case here!

> Could we put a visual confirmation for posting as guest?

I wish we could, as this would indeed be the easiest solution!

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that phpBB currently does not offer this. (There's not even a switch "[x] disable guest posting" -- I had to manually modify all sub-forums from "Public" to "Registered"... :-o )

> It would allow "manual" spamming but would at least avoid bots.

Yep. I'm not afraid of manual spamming (which is still possible), as a "manual spammer" would most probably not chose a low-frequency forum like this one, but rather a high-traffic one (with a higher ranking itself)...

> Since I'm not an expert about this stuff - I'm really far from being so -
> I must ask also: am I messing around?

Oops??? Why do you think that you're messing around?

Because you have posted a relatively high number of posts in a relatively short time? That's as far away from spamming as I can think -- I really appreciated your posts in this forum so far, as they always had something new or interesting to read (or play :-) ) so far. :-)

No, when talking about spam, I mean that drugs/casino/whatever advertising link trash that I have to delete for some days now. (Even now in the Off-Topic forum -- that cannot be anything different than a bot! A manual spammer would have stopped some sub-forums earlier. OK, not if he read this thread, but I'm sure nobody did this. Bots can read, but can't understand what they read... ;-) )

I said "messing around", not "spamming around"

Glad to know that my ideas were right

> I said "messing around", not "spamming around"

I know... And now I also understand what you really meant. :-D

Sorry... ;-)

Well - I overlooked this post!
I'm ok with it, but it seems that both CEEL and Steffest should register IMO.
It is a very good desicion anyways too. No more (or lesser) SPAM now!

one picture says more than 1000 words...
http://www.zomis.net/rnd/download.php?id=433

I just spent the last 20 minutes deleting that crap.. And according to my watch, the spam was there for 5 minutes before I started deleting it... phew, talk about timing
Holger: I think there is a mod for PHPBB which enables visual confirmation for guest posters... I haven't searched yet, but I'm pretty sure there is one...

[Edit] Just took the time and searched for it...
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=266787
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=264344

Ok, they're really taking the piss now...

Looks like all topics are going to have to be set as Members only... unfortunately...

Rockford4ever:
> I'm ok with it, but it seems that both CEEL and Steffest should register IMO.

Yeah, I also was thinking about Steffest and especially CEEL (who had good new ideas so far), as I do respect people deciding to post as guests. :-o

> It is a very good desicion anyways too. No more (or lesser) SPAM now!

Yep! But:

Zomis:
> one picture says more than 1000 words...
> http://www.zomis.net/rnd/download.php?id=433
> I just spent the last 20 minutes deleting that crap..

OMG!!! :-O

This looks terrible!! Thanks a lot, Zomis, for cleaning up that mess!! :-o

> I think there is a mod for PHPBB which enables visual confirmation for
> guest posters...
> [Edit] Just took the time and searched for it...

Cool! I will definitely have a look at this mod when I have some more time than now! This would indeed be the perfect solution!

Until then, I think I will shut down also this Off-Topic section for guests, if the spam attacks don't stop soon. (Still hope to get a comment at least from CEEL before this, as he contributed quite some interesting posts the last time, and I would be sad if he would refuse to post because of my decision to disable guest posts. :-o )

Hope to re-open posting as guest soon again with that mod! (Hope it works with the last version of phpBB though...)

There were actually more that showed up about an hour after Zomis cleaned all that lot up too, which is when I made my post...

It seemed like they waited till Zomis had left before they posted again...

Darkon wrote:There were actually more that showed up about an hour after Zomis cleaned all that lot up too, which is when I made my post...

It seemed like they waited till Zomis had left before they posted again...

Yeah. I saw 2 more spam posts later today, but this time they were posted as new topics and not as replies to earlier topics, making it much easier to delete them.

Hopefully, we can eliminate all (auto)spam with that phpBB modification. That way, maybe guestposting could be reenabled again...

Edit: Just got another spammer, it posted while I was writing this. Also a new topic...

Don't like spam much so if it's necessary.
But I haven't really seen any spamming around here, pretty quiet
and if something looks like spam I don't read it other than for 'fun'.
Glory to the cleaner whoever it is and death to spammers .. hooray!

CEEL

CEEL wrote:But I haven't really seen any spamming around here, pretty quiet

That's most likely because you're logged in when we've already cleaned it up. And yes, we are very effective sometimes It's all about timing Just like I posted earlier in this thread. Some spam was here for 5 minutes, then I started cleaning it up. And while I was cleaning, only Rockford4ever also discovered the spam.

CEEL wrote:Glory to the cleaner whoever it is and death to spammers .. hooray!

Yeah! Death to spammers!