Is it just me or does it seem like an uptick in their interest in Grogheads lately?
It has been a huge problem. Probably bigger than you know because I tend to zap them fairly quickly.
Average is two to three a day.
If anyone has suggestions about how to stop them, I'm all ears.
I average one a day. It used to be one a week. They usually post nonsense. Occasionally they post in actual threads with what initially seems like relevance, and then they...de-cloak.
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on January 02, 2022, 11:47:08 AM
It has been a huge problem. Probably bigger than you know because I tend to zap them fairly quickly.
Average is two to three a day.
If anyone has suggestions about how to stop them, I'm all ears.
I frequent another board which managed to curb a good amount of spam by adding a mini questionnaire to the account signup process. Something everybody who's genuinely interested in participating on the board would know. In the Grogheads case, it could be something like, "What year did World War I end?" and auto-reject anyone who doesn't enter "1918".
Of course, if a spammer is really dedicated, they can get past this - but it's a basic floodgate that keeps out the lowest level of automatic spammers who simply bot an account and auto-post random garbage.
We have a great community here that is very proactive about reporting spammers, though. I really appreciate that as a mod.
Quote from: al_infierno on January 02, 2022, 02:10:31 PM
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on January 02, 2022, 11:47:08 AM
It has been a huge problem. Probably bigger than you know because I tend to zap them fairly quickly.
Average is two to three a day.
If anyone has suggestions about how to stop them, I'm all ears.
I frequent another board which managed to curb a good amount of spam by adding a mini questionnaire to the account signup process. Something everybody who's genuinely interested in participating on the board would know. In the Grogheads case, it could be something like, "What year did World War I end?" and auto-reject anyone who doesn't enter "1918".
Of course, if a spammer is really dedicated, they can get past this - but it's a basic floodgate that keeps out the lowest level of automatic spammers who simply bot an account and auto-post random garbage.
We have that already!
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on January 02, 2022, 05:10:55 PM
Quote from: al_infierno on January 02, 2022, 02:10:31 PM
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on January 02, 2022, 11:47:08 AM
It has been a huge problem. Probably bigger than you know because I tend to zap them fairly quickly.
Average is two to three a day.
If anyone has suggestions about how to stop them, I'm all ears.
I frequent another board which managed to curb a good amount of spam by adding a mini questionnaire to the account signup process. Something everybody who's genuinely interested in participating on the board would know. In the Grogheads case, it could be something like, "What year did World War I end?" and auto-reject anyone who doesn't enter "1918".
Of course, if a spammer is really dedicated, they can get past this - but it's a basic floodgate that keeps out the lowest level of automatic spammers who simply bot an account and auto-post random garbage.
We have that already!
We are grogs so make it hard
Something along the lines of
How many buttons were on the napoleonic chaussers Cheval de ligne and we're they silver or gold?
That will really weed out any non anal retentive historical wargaming obsessed geeks
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on January 02, 2022, 05:10:55 PM
Quote from: al_infierno on January 02, 2022, 02:10:31 PM
Quote from: Jarhead0331 on January 02, 2022, 11:47:08 AM
It has been a huge problem. Probably bigger than you know because I tend to zap them fairly quickly.
Average is two to three a day.
If anyone has suggestions about how to stop them, I'm all ears.
I frequent another board which managed to curb a good amount of spam by adding a mini questionnaire to the account signup process. Something everybody who's genuinely interested in participating on the board would know. In the Grogheads case, it could be something like, "What year did World War I end?" and auto-reject anyone who doesn't enter "1918".
Of course, if a spammer is really dedicated, they can get past this - but it's a basic floodgate that keeps out the lowest level of automatic spammers who simply bot an account and auto-post random garbage.
We have that already!
Perhaps ask for the answers backwards to prevent bots just doing a google search and auto filling the answer? Maybe require spaces between the letters?
That is if they are bots.
Another common one I see is the "captcha" identify all the traffic lights or buses sort of protection.
Maybe change the JOIN or Create Account button, post to something groggy like "Speak Up on the Forums".
Maybe Login should be "Forum up" or something.
You could even change the "new topic" button to something else... like "grogpost".
I make more than $100k a year and work from home playing wargames. This is entirely true.
Ask me how!
How?
By being a Groghead mod?!
....wait, no, that can't be true, SirAndrew isn't a mod. Hm.
Still waiting for him to tell me! He's playing coy.
Instead of onlyfans he does onlygrogs and plays Carcassone in tight undies
:embarrassed:
I saw a forum have a lot of trouble with spammers once. They came up with a pretty unique solution. Instead of IP banning or extra work in registering, they found what worked wasn't to try and play whack-a-mole (the bad ones will inevitably make a new account somehow).
Instead they had all new users start with a status where the first X posts had to be moderator approved individually before becoming visible to anyone else. If it wasn't mod approved in a certain time, it got deleted automatically.
Then if the spammers still got through that probation period, instead of being banned/deleted and encouraged to make a new account, the spammer would be limited to a 'special' forum that nobody aside from the admins saw, where the automated scripts would happily post their junk that didn't clutter up the rest of the forum.
Quote from: Victor on February 23, 2023, 07:03:40 PMI saw a forum have a lot of trouble with spammers once. They came up with a pretty unique solution. Instead of IP banning or extra work in registering, they found what worked wasn't to try and play whack-a-mole (the bad ones will inevitably make a new account somehow).
Instead they had all new users start with a status where the first X posts had to be moderator approved individually before becoming visible to anyone else. If it wasn't mod approved in a certain time, it got deleted automatically.
Then if the spammers still got through that probation period, instead of being banned/deleted and encouraged to make a new account, the spammer would be limited to a 'special' forum that nobody aside from the admins saw, where the automated scripts would happily post their junk that didn't clutter up the rest of the forum.
This is a great idea. I'll defer to JH's expertise of course.