Membership Approval

[Dr Maturin]

Recently, we've had a lot of people posting advertisements and gimmicks. Perhaps this could be curbed by setting it up so that moderators have to approve accounts before new users may create posts.

[Jan]

A lot of the registrants that we suspect are spammers never even post, thank heavens. And Doug's taken some pre-emptive action, too.

All I would ask is that people don't reply to the spam. Ranger1 and I will eliminate it as soon as we see it.

Jan

[SmileOfTheShadow]

A lot of the registrants that we suspect are spammers never even post, thank heavens. And Doug's taken some pre-emptive action, too.

All I would ask is that people don't reply to the spam. Ranger1 and I will eliminate it as soon as we see it.

Jan

I've noticed we have a huuuuge amount of registered users who have never posted. I love the ones that actually have names like "PRODUCT ADVERTISEMENT"

Jon

[Satai Delenn]

That would be nice gets irritating to se ads or whatever.

[AaronB]

Sometimes we can weed out the new spammer accounts based on user name or the email domain. Unfortunately many can't be spotted that easily and we don't find out until they post spam.

One idea I have is to flag new user accounts as always requiring moderation. That way, me or a moderator would have to approve a message before it was visible. After one or two on-topic posts I could promote the account to normal status. I need to look at the forum configuration and see what would be involved in a change like this.

I'm not sure if it would be more work to pre-screen new users or just delete spam and the associated user when it happens. It does seems like the rate of spam is on the rise.

Thanks,

-DougO

I have not gone through the sign up process a for a while and forget what goes into it but, would it help to have a word verification or a link that would get emailed and they have to click on the link to get final approval?

That and I think that a moderation period would be a good idea.

[Lunan]

look at Gallireyone.com the outpost does an amazing job of killing spammers off fast and not letting that many get thru and there seem to be alot more people who go there then there are that stop here (seems that way, but doctor who fans can get very um noticable at times)

[Dr Maturin]

We've curbed spam at The Pit by requiring membership approval. Do you do that here yet?

[Dr Maturin]

Don't know.

[AaronB]

Right now we just have the email confirmation before an account is active. There is no human decision in the process. What we need is something that is automatic on our end but requires manual intervention on the spammer's part.

-DougO

Maybe something like a "word" verification system like they use for posting comments on blogger? Does v bulletin allow for plug-ins?

[Dr Maturin]

What about something that makes it so that you just have to click and approve new members? With names like "SAVE MONEY NOW" you can be pretty sure on definite spammers. Some will get through, but not as many.

[Jan]

If we could get such a thing, I agree that the word verification system theBaron suggested would be best.

Jan

[Andrew_Swallow]

Or just ask a maths equation like
Three plus six equals

Accept nine and 9.

[AaronB]

Thanks Doug!

[Lunan]

The latest version of vBulletin supports image verification where the user has to type in the numbers/letters seen in a bitmap. I think that feature will help reduce spam because it should block scripted creation of accounts. I'm going to try and schedule some time to perform the upgrade soon.

In December the spammers were very active and created about 800 new accounts here. Fortunately most of those were never used and are now deleted. Today I enabled a feature that will block user's from registering using email addresses from known spammer domains (e.g., cashette.com, mail.ru, etc). I banned over 100 domains which should make registering spam account more difficult.

-DougO

keep up the good work but i'm afriad it dosn't seem to be working

[Jan]

Once you start the process you can't cancel short of restoring a backup of the site. I'm sure it will be okay...

We have faith in you, Doug! No pressure....

Jan