Preserving site integrity.

This has been discussed a bit off an on before but it's my opinion we really need to start floating some ideas and planning how it can be done.
We've been pretty lucky up till now but gradually there has been an increase in the number of spam emails. We are currently averaging one a day with about four in one day on one occasion.

I cant do it, but I'm sure someone can, I don't know if anyone is in contact with Cisco but if they are we need his input.

I do know from being on quite a few forums that we need to get much tougher about how we let people register.

As some examples taken from other forums.

1/ Gmail and Hotmail accounts not accepted for registration.
2/ An automatic email sent to valid email address for people registering, this email will contain a hyperlink that they have to click on to activate by some human function like using captcha.
3/ New registration given only 24hrs to be activated before link ceases to work and after successful registration another 24hrs before the first post can be made.
4/ New members must accrue at least five valid postings before they can PM any other member.
5/ Any membership logging as being inactive more then 8 weeks by not having logged in is deleted.
6/ Word filters set up.

Lastly we might have to consider the fact that we may need to loose existing postings to ultimately obtain a more secure site.

More administrators need to log in more often to help with the workload of deleting spam/inappropriate posts and banning those who send them.

Mychael/Administrator

agree on all points except number one, I don't think its necessary if you have the captacha pictures during registration?

I think the reality is that unless Cisco is keen on making these changes it will be hard to get someone else to do it as it is custom code. Perhaps we need to look at moving to a phpBB style forum or something open source?

I for one actually really like this layout, the speed and the simplicity, but it is almost at the point of not being manageable.

This site is a real credit to Cisco and would be a shame to change it too much, but I agree something needs to be done. I'm happy to help in that regard if we can work out a way forward.

(I'm happy to help out admin it if need be, I'm on most days :)

I unfortunately cannot bestow admin authority to people. That was something Cisco did, I need to find out who else has admin rights and/or get more regulars made as admins.

The objection to gmail and hotmail accounts are they are harder to trace at least that is what I have been told. A computer forum to which I subscribe and would I expect be full of tech savvy people has banned gmail accounts for exactly that reason. If a person has nothing to hide then no reason for them not to use an email account supplied to them by their provider.

Mychael

+1 :)

frank

While I agree on most points I dont like number 5 >5/ Any membership logging as being inactive more then 8 weeks by not having logged in is deleted.
There are a few long term members including the site owner himself who would be removed under that rule.

Yeah, I've thrown up a selection of things used on other forums. We don't need to employ every single one although I know of a couple of forums that were using quite a few of the ideas combined.

I don't have the skills to do it even if I had access authority to do so but I'm trying to get everyone thinking about what we ultimately need to do if we want to keep the site clean and being used for what it was intended, Micras.

I've been on holidays this last month and finding spam I have to knock off every single day, once back to work I cannot and don't intend to try to monitor the site as much as I have this last month so long term something needs to be done.

Mychael

hello everyone,

cisco and me are currently working on something to get everything cleaned up. Unfortunatly it will take a bit of time, since we plan a full relaunch of the site with new features. i've been banning and deleting a lot of this spamm-o crap aswell. even if i'm not writing many posts nowadays, i'm still watching the site and posts quite often a day. please be patient as we're working on this in our free time.
sorry for any inconvinience, i'll try to fix stuff as fast as i can :)

cheers,
mik

Spam is becoming a real issue on a few sites I spend time on and seems the spammers are working over time right now. Without moving the site to a more common (Boring) forum base I don't think we can implement any of the changes needed without rewriting the sites code from scratch. I spent a few minutes looking at the site member list and there are many suspect members with Afghanistan as there loc so maybe you can go though the list and remove them all.

that's what we're about to do, that's why it will take so long :)
the code is outdated, and cisco and me are building up a new one.

i'm currently setting up something up to get some spam bots out of the site. its just a simple script indeed. but i don't have much time right now.

aswell as the userlist, i've seen that too.

Very true, however for example, I use a Gmail account as my primary, why? Because over the last 3 years I have changed ISP's 4 or 5 times and its a royal pia to move to another email address. That said, I wrap my gmail account behind a domain name, ie, matt (at) mashd.net which is my normal address, bounces email to and from my gmail account. I started doing this years ago so I could redirect to any ISP address behind it.

So i can see your point and wouldn't worry me too much, I'm just wondering about how much its needed :)

All but one of the ISP's I've used didn't do email addresses or wanted to charge for them. I've only ever been active on one forum that banned webmail addresses, australian pulsar, and that was a real pain to arrange.
I too am a bit irregular logging onto many forums. There are some that I've come back to after a year or more absent because of a change in vehicle or interests.
I like this format because it runs fast on very slow connections and dialup. I still use dialup at home because it's just about free & broadband is prohibitively expensive in this country. When I'm working in remote locations (Australian outback, central China, middle of nowhere Indonesia etc) the internet speed is usually bad & this is often when I find the time to log onto various forums.

So I'm against 1 & 5, and against loosing old postings/photos (again), and moving to another format like phpBB.

Indeed nz_aj, i really agree.
We're not planing into changing to another format, we're just planing into making it new. Also i like the simplicity of the site, and this will stay like that. Also with any posts, pictures etc. we will NOT loose them, as they are indeed very precious.

cheers.
mik

Here here on all comments. You guys that have commented have covered my concerns. It's great you guys are looking into this sort of thing. Keep up the fantastic work guys!

hey! id be deleted to. i stil lcheck in here now and then

Yeah 8 weeks without a login is a excessive definitely - for those who go away for extended periods it's not really fair. I'm not a fan of deleting accounts at all for many reasons though I can't be arsed writing it all out right now.

---dens

Hi Mychael,

Typical IT forum. Self-righteous idealistic so and so's!

I have no ISP. I work off prepaid mobile internet most of the time (although currently you will be able to see this IP as coming from iiNet, it is not usual for me).

It is a good idea but simply unrealistic in this day and age with so many people moving to mobile internet for convenience and also because its also the only option they have (No cable or open connections in the local exchange).

Validation emails seem to cause a few issues.

IMHO Best thing to do for a place like this is change the registration process and include a member validation process where one of the administrators/moderators has to approve an account before it becomes active. Wouldn't be overly time consuming for this site due to it being relatively low volume so I think it may be effective.

IMHO Best thing to do for a place like this is change the registration process and include a member validation process where one of the administrators/moderators has to approve an account before it becomes active. Wouldn't be overly time consuming for this site due to it being relatively low volume so I think it may be effective."