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[thomas]

Dear valued members,

while the new year is still young I am saddened to state that it has started with a noticeable increase in spam and spam registrations, mostly from Eastern European countries (the usual suspects). While I am still reluctant to switch to moderated registration with regard to the additional effort it entails for the team members, I have decided to make some of the fields in the user profile mandatory to complete in order to separate the "wheat from the chaff".

As a matter of consequence, not only new registrants, but existing members as well will be forced to update these fields upon signing in or updating their profile. While I realise that this procedure constitutes an importunity to our members, I kindly ask for your understanding and apologise for the inconvenience.

 

[Nuala]

This should have been done years ago, thomas. I doubt anyone will complain, and if they do, well they just have to suck it up. It may very well decrease the amount of work the moderation team has to put into dealing with spammers.

 

[Petaris]

I'm sure people will understand. When it comes to SPAM its usually either a small inconvenience because of blocking it or a large inconvenience from receiving it.

 

[Mikawa Ossan]

I must admit that I was not pleased at the change when I logged in today. I am happy to see this thread, however.

Given that you resisted making this change for so long and that spam is a real issue, as unhappy as I am with the changes I do understand why they were taken and accept them as part of being a 'legitimate' member of the Jref community.

It's too bad that spammers exist, but so long as they do everyone else must exact a price to keep them at bay. If this is the only price to be paid, we should really consider ourselves lucky to be able to belong to such a community so cheaply.

 

[thomas]

Thanks for your understanding, I appreciate your kind words.

 

[user46182]

Oh dear! Just spent a fair bit of time studying the anti-spam options over at vBulletin and wow! Even though it's a pain in the arse, I would recommend a conversion to phpBB because their anti-spam MODs are a heck of a lot better and they seem to have a whole better attitude toward the problem than what I was just reading over at vBulletin. I had a higher opinion of this forum platform. I had no idea they were so strange over at vBulletin. Sad. In fact, it's worse than sad.

I hope this post won't be considered a plug for phpBB. An ASP platforum is also quite good, but it's expensive. That's why I indicate that phpBB is better for some that can't afford the ASP. I really don't know if the SM forum platform has good anti-spam MODs or not. But I do know the conversion from vBulletin to SM is prone to more problems than vBulletin to phpBB.

Not a good situation, though, for you, thomas, with this forum platform. Not enough support over there at vBulletin, it would seem. I'm very surprised, actually. My education continues on this matter. Wow!!

 

[Grandpa Frank]

The number of SPAMMERS who attack this site.....

is incredible. As far as I'm concerned , the more roadblocks we set up for them the better. I like knowing member's info and location , makes me feel a bit more comfortable , even though you can't believe anything on the internet for certain. We must ban & block several thousand spammers a year.

Uncle Frank

 

[user46182]

I'm fully aware of the problem, but I have managed to cut down spammers from thousands a year to about a couple hundred a year by implementing certain MODs. But I don't use vBulletin. That's also per forum. Have a few and all have quite different target readers/members. So it's not the content that counts, or that reduces the numbers.

Thousands a year only tells me you need some better MODs. Plain and simple. Feel sorry for you. It's a pain stopping them spam bots. And most of them are machines, not humans. In fact, it's the humans that are harder to catch before they actually post. But you can have a moderation queue to help stop the humans from getting on the board, no?

But I gotta tell ya, I was so surprised over at the vBulletin forum. They seem kind of behind the curve on this one. I had no idea.

 

[thomas]

Thanks for your feedback. First of all, we have disabled all the fields that were previously required, except for "country" and "city of residence". Adding additional information did not really stop spammers in their tracks and - as I have recently learned - also raised unforeseen privacy issues.

vBulletin does actually offer a couple of useful modifications to fend off spam, but these mods also tend to lock out a lot of legitimate users. Fine-tuning all lines of defence is a tricky task indeed. As of yesterday, I have re-activated some of these mods, our logs show already over 400 potential spammers barred from signing up.

On top of the bots, you have humans signing up looking perfectly legitimate, who, probably paid by post, then start spamming the fora, placings links in their sigs, posting inconspicious blog entries or subtly wrapping their rubbish into seemingly related posts. My education on these matters continues on a daily basis, too.