Bots and advertisements

[ada]

I've noticed that there are a lot of bots advertising websites lately, usually at the same hours when no moderators are online due to US time zone.

I wanted to raise up a suggestion to perhaps add a captcha in the registration to prevent or reduce this.

If that doesn't help maybe have a european time moderator to help with removing these spam threads.

Cheers.

[Bring4th_Plenum]

hey blossom!

Thanks for the thoughts.

This has definitely been an ongoing, and present issue for the last many months.

It's led to many Mod Discussions, and it's encompassed the suggestions that you've had.

I can only thank the community for their ongoing patience, as we figure out the best way to address things (and also the members that take the time to report the spam threads - that's very helpful!).

We've been hindered in taking further action for a few reasons:

1) technical access - there are aspects on the server that Austin can access; but ultimately, there are things that only Steve (our webmaster) can change which leads to ...

2) timing - due to personal catalyst, some of the discussed changes can't be put into effect without Steve's intervention.  So the appropriate timing hasn't yet come into play.

This is less than ideal, of course, and affects everyone's experience on the site.  My own personal hours usually cover the periods when the US is asleep - but even then - there can be a delay of a few hours in stomping out those annoying threads.

So yes - it's definitely been on our radar!  And we're hoping to have measures put in place to totally curb these fake accounts.

One measure was actually implemented a few weeks ago; and it led to a minor reduction in the amount of spam that made it through.  But only a small dent, in the overall scheme of things.

(08-07-2018, 01:20 AM)blossom Wrote:  I wanted to raise up a suggestion to perhaps add a captcha in the registration to prevent or reduce this.

This is definitely the best measure to prevent automated registrations.

It's the preferred option too.  

We'll be moving forward with that as soon as we can.

/ /

thread moved to the Meta forum.

G

[Cyan]

Captcha and 2-3 more mods, I'm looking for paying work so I may not be available as a mod btw. Thats my opinion on the solution.

[Bring4th_Austin]

A good captcha would certainly solve 99% of the problems, so that is the preferred route. There are unfortunately some unconventional barriers in implementing the captcha (due to the unconventional way in which Bring4th is built), but Steve will soon be turning his attention to Bring4th and this will hopefully be at the top of the list of fixes to implement. Thanks everyone for the patience, please hang in there.