WANTED (Not)

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xnederlandx

Member
Hello,

Maybe have a little Quiz on the registration form that ask's about the Picaxe.
You could have a set of questions, which get randomly picked.
 
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moxhamj

New Member
That is a good suggestion. The questions could come with an explanation as to why they are being asked. I bet "How many pins does a picaxe 08M have?" would fool all bots and quite a number of spammers as well. And if it doesn't, make the questions a bit harder. It would only apply to the first post.
 
hippy

hippy

Technical Support
Staff member
It could be a bit unfair asking about a PICAXE for someone who has come here to get help - Unless it's, What's a PICAXE ...

1) A pre-programmed microcontroller

2) The capital of France

3) About 18 feet 6 inches

4) visit website bejing chip store buy happy party time big en.beijing2008.cn
 
J

jodicalhon

New Member
Dr_Acula said:
medvampire, I am a GP. And yes, Dippy, sucking blood is the game! Usually the first 4 patients every morning are there for blood tests. I then send the specimens off to medvampire. To look at. Or whatever he does with them...
Click to expand...
And I ferry them (the specimens) from Dr_Acula to medvampire... :)

Sorry, no insights on spam reduction...
 
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moxhamj

New Member
Re Dippy "Oh yes Acrylic... I can see right through you!"

Hmm - a question: if medvampire, myself and acrylic were standing in front of a mirror, would you be able to see any of our reflections?
 
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MartinM57

Moderator
The current Mrs MartinM has just registered on
http://www.thesewingforum.co.uk/register.php

Worth a look at the Rules of Membership and then click through to the registration page to see the additional info required. Looks like a good example to follow...

(It's OK, she's got a high-end computer-controlled sewing machine, downloadable machine embroidery patterns from the 'net blah blah blah - so she doesn't let the household down too much :))
 
A

Andrew Cowan

Senior Member
MartinM57 said:
The current Mrs MartinM has just registered on
http://www.thesewingforum.co.uk/register.php

Worth a look at the Rules of Membership and then click through to the registration page to see the additional info required. Looks like a good example to follow...

(It's OK, she's got a high-end computer-controlled sewing machine, downloadable machine embroidery patterns from the 'net blah blah blah - so she doesn't let the household down too much :))
Click to expand...
There's a forum for sewing?!?

<Goes back to reading posts on the forum dedicated to a microchip brand...>


But seriously - that looks like a good method - asking for an intro. It's also vbulletin as well, so it shouldn't be hard for an admin to set up on here.

Technical! We have a job for you.

Andrew
 
D

Dominic B

New Member
That's not bad, but it does give the registrant a lot to do, especially when all they may want to do is just pose one question, for which they don't want to write a large amount.

The simpler the registration process is, the better I would've thought. Although some simpler form could probably be implemented.
 
D

Dippy

Moderator
Mmmm... looks very similar to this Forum's registration with that graphic doo-dah that you have to type in. I can't see any significant difference.

The current Mrs MartinM?

Sounds like she's going to be turned in for a new model soon, or she is just one of a whole string of them.
Can't she embroider your bell-pads to a satisfactory standard?

I see a recent spammer from Oz... go on Dr_ac , prescribe him something nice or inject him with air.
 
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moxhamj

New Member
A spammer from Oz? That is not fair dinkum. I guess they can speak English, which kind of rules out asking simple questions to block access. And I know that our NZ friends will no doubt respond with the story of the dumbest person in NZ who emigrated to Australia and raised the IQ of both countries.
 
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demonicpicaxeguy

Senior Member
one of the now closed down mini forums i used to visit had the same problem, especially with several repeat offenders using different usernames but still from the same company, one offender made it at daily habit to post at least 1 post advertising their wares in every thread, so eventaully after a few emails to the company concerned about and a few unkind words back, they were simply spammed right back everyday over 1000 emails got sent to their sales email address with every email filled with 10kb of random letters with "stop spamming XXXXXXX forum" in the subject line, after 1 week pretty much all forms of spamming with odd exception stopped,

no amount of blocking ,filtering, questioning ,moderating is ever going to stop it,
 
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Hooter

Senior Member
'And I know that our NZ friends will no doubt respond with the story of the dumbest person in NZ who emigrated to Australia and raised the IQ of both countries.'
A quip used by the Prime Minister of the day Robert (Piggy) Muldoon - and it didn't score him any points either.
 
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medvampire

New Member
Dr_Acula said:
Re Dippy "Oh yes Acrylic... I can see right through you!"

Hmm - a question: if medvampire, myself and acrylic were standing in front of a mirror, would you be able to see any of our reflections?
Click to expand...
I am a big boy, put me in my lab coat and you couldn't miss me even if I don't have a reflection. Pediatric day today. The ENT will be doing T&A with a few ear tubes tomorrow so I have heard screaming all day so my quota of horror has been filled for the week so every one here is safe. I have put my fangs away.
I think adding to the registration is a good ideal. I also think all new members should be approved with in few post by the mods or the mods need the power to ban/block users and their ip's.
Later
Steve
 
B

BCJKiwi

Senior Member
Not sure if Blocking IPs will achieve what is desired:-

Serious spammers will have endless IPs available via trojans or will simply spoof new IPs at will.
Many users don't have static IPs.
Blocking IPs of those that do have fixed IPs may well block adjacent IPs as well.
 
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medvampire

New Member
Let me explain.
Spammers post many messages in diffrent threads very quickly. There are scripts that check the rate of posting to threads and block the ip if the post thread count vs time is to fast. I have used one that hooks into Apache directly but it requires some changes to the hppd.conf, php.conf, and the cron files for use with vBulletin. You will have a hard time blocking spam with just changes to vBulletin itself.
Steve
 
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Mycroft2152

Senior Member
medvampire said:
Let me explain.
Spammers post many messages in diffrent threads very quickly. There are scripts that check the rate of posting to threads and block the ip if the post thread count vs time is to fast. I have used one that hooks into Apache directly but it requires some changes to the hppd.conf, php.conf, and the cron files for use with vBulletin. You will have a hard time blocking spam with just changes to vBulletin itself.
Steve
Click to expand...
Unfoprtunately, that method would shut out some of our more prolific, but legitimate posters.

Myc
 
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moxhamj

New Member
I seem to recall there is a time lockout on this forum - I tried to post two within a few seconds and it made me wait 30 seconds or something similar. But making that time lockout much longer than that would be a problem. I am trying to think of other solutions but they all have problems. Eg requiring a valid real address - but it can be faked. Requiring an email for verification - but it might slow down someone's initial post to the point they give up. Requiring a proper grammer check - but it might shut out some of our younger users. This is not an easy problem to solve. Programming picaxes is a lot easier.

I would like to say a big thankyou to our moderators who clean all this stuff up without us even knowing it is happening. This would be a bit of a thankless job and it is appreciated.
 
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212

Senior Member
"I would like to say a big thankyou to our moderators who clean all this stuff up without us even knowing it is happening. This would be a bit of a thankless job and it is appreciated."

Ditto on that!

Having recently joined, I can say for sure, I would not have minded having to click something in an email to be able to post on here. There are a lot of forums where you can't even read the content without joining...at least you can read it here. Where I go for trail cam stuff, they really got tired of spam, you have to wait for someone to personally approve you before you can get in. That IS a pain, because they may not get to you for a few days sometimes, but it would not be a problem if it was faster.

Maybe put it to a vote? Ask the newer members if they would have minded having to reply to an email???
 
D

Dippy

Moderator
If they're "not too bright" then can't an IP from a particular country be banned confidently.

I predict we shall shortly get more Spam from China. Maybe from admin86skf 117.11.108.2 Cnc Group Tianjin Province Network, Beijing, China

I hope I'm wong and that it is a genuine user :)
 
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moxhamj

New Member
No objection to that, Dippy. Have a list of banned IPs. If it is a genuine user they can send an email to rev-ed. But I bet they won't.
 
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westaust55

Moderator
SPAM

Another spam type message? :confused:

Finished User PICAXE Projects / Code Snippets /
in BCJKiwi’s thread MCP23016 I/O expander driving LEDs PICAXE 28X1 hi2c sample code

Post by defg107 entitles World of Warcraft_16 on 26-06-2008, at 11:24
 
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