Require Registration to Post?

[James]

Not to be mean or anything, but if you've paid attention recently you'd have noticed that the spam is all of the kind for people advertising a product or saying something like "Hey, so you guys gonna vote for *insert cause here*?" Those are basically the only posts that have happened that I've seen, so I don't see why people just can't sign up for an account... although I suppose that would mean they'd just sign up and then spam that stuff. Maybe.

I don't know, now, actually, because I'd never thought about that whole "post three times and join" thingy. I've always been invited to forums, so I've never had to post just to see what the people were like.

In a general sense though, I wouldn't really do that- I tend to lurk in the forums a bit just to see what's going on and then I'll sign up for an account and post.

Eh. It could go either way.

[Tarathilien]

It's 11 Yay and 5 Nay right now. If you people don't want the registration thingy, I suggest you PM people and have them vote here. We have more than 16 people in Titan, I'm sure.

[Tharris]

*points at vote being closed wonders if tara has any other suggestions.*

[Tarathilien]

Oh...sorry. Didn't see that, Tharris. Hmm....suggestion: pay off the Poll creator to let the thing run one more week...a few billion marks will probably cover it .

Only 16 people voted?!? I guess the rest are busy with school and work....i'm working about 70 hours a week with my two jobs and 12 hour school schedule and still find time to check the forums, somehow, lol.

[Curulan]

Yes, the poll time was only 7 days. I will still leave this thread open for comments and posters.

To see the relevance, I just counted the amount of spam threads since January 1. There have been 85 of them. That's almost one hundred in nearly 30 days. All of these threads were started by spambots, posting as unregistered users.

Not only that, but some of these spams/links are pornographic in nature. If I had to choose between shutting the site down and allowing pornographic material here, I would shut down the site in a heartbeat.

[Joe]

so use a keygen instead of making everyone register to post.

[Ominous]

I second Joe there, and I didn't even think about it 'til then.

[Curulan]

I don't think that's a feasible option, unless you already know how to do it.

[zipcat]

We could always ask around.. I know a few people that run sites like this--with keygen/thingies--who would probably be willing to help us.

[Curulan]

Ok, I've installed a mod to the board which should make this entire question moot.

If you notice that your posts start acting funny -- specifically going to Preview all the time, instead of just making the post, please make sure that at least five seconds have elapsed since the time you open the "new post" page and when you click "Submit". That is one of the things the mod checks for.

Aslo, there is a known incompatibility with the Quick Reply mod we have installed. Any post made through Quick Reply will go to preview first, since it bypasses the "real" posting page. There is no fix for this at this time.

If you guys feel that this is too annoying, please let me know. It is rather simple to remove this mod (unlike some), and I really don't like the way it works, personally. But it does work.

[Joe]

so far I don't mind having to click one extra click on the quick reply honestly, if it gets too annoying though, I'll work harder on finding that keycode thingy for you.

[Curulan]

I removed the mod because it had absolutely no effect. Apparently, these spams are not made by spambots, but by actual people paid to spam, sweatshop-style.

There is another mod I would like to try. If that doesn't work, I will be switching to board to registered users only.

EDIT: I did finally find a mod that puts a CAPTCHA on guest posts. However, if these really are humans posting them, it won't make a bit of difference. I'll give it a week or so to see how it works.

[Tharris]

another board i visit frequently was having problems with this a while back they did something a bit unorthodox the spam-bot's/humans seem to only post in the first forum available to them they created a new forum specifically for them and put it at the top with a little disclaimer something like spambots only something or other it seemed to resolve the issue at least as a temporary work around.

~tharris

[Curulan]

Well... There is one more mod I'm going to try before moving to registered posting only. What it is supposed to do is make it impossible for unregistered and newly-registered users to post links.