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OPENSTEP
The One
Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
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 Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 2:14 am Post subject: Forum spam |
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It seems there has been an increase in the number of spam postings in the forums here by some bots (?) that are adapting to some of the standard protection techniques. In the meantime I have doubled the time interval that is required between hitting the reply button to a forum topic and until when a post will be accepted. Anonymous users will now be required to wait 10-15 seconds before their posts are accepted.
This, of course, is an ongoing battle and will always be as these "hackers" evolve to match the spam prevention measures we put in place. There are a number of potential solutions:
1) Disable anonymous posting. I really don't want to do this as anonymous posting is used by several members here, folks who are on public terminals, and random users who drop by for questions.
2) Limit anonymous posting to certain forums. Has similar drawbacks to 1.
3) Rely on human intervention to delete spam postings. This will require adding more moderators.
Thoughts?
In the meantime, if you see any spam postings that I miss (as I don't have time to carefully read through all of the forums) PM them to me and I'll delete them post haste.
ed |
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sardisson
Town Crier
Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588
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| Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 4:04 am Post subject: |
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I have the same reservations about 1 and 2; people don't want to register just to ask why something doesn't mount/launch/work right. It's unfortunate enough that they're having a problem, but having to register, even something as simple as a forum registration, to get help is a turn-off for lots of folks.
If the additional delay doesn't work and you decide to go with option 3, I'm willing to lend a hand.
Smokey
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"[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki |
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ovvldc
Captain Naiobi
Joined: Sep 13, 2004
Posts: 2352
Location: Zürich, CH
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| Posted: Wed Jul 13, 2005 10:47 pm Post subject: |
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I'm with Smokey on this one.
_________________
"What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi |
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Waldo
Oracle
Joined: Dec 03, 2004
Posts: 239
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 5:53 pm Post subject: |
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| ovvldc wrote: | | I'm with Smokey on this one. |
Ditto.
W |
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OPENSTEP
The One
Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:39 pm Post subject: |
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OK, thus far the increase in the anonymous posting delay time doesn't seem to be an issue for anyone since I've still seen guest postings crop up here since I enacted the revision. For now we'll go with that and (3) since we have a couple volunteers 
ed |
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OPENSTEP
The One
Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
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| Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 11:40 pm Post subject: |
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Also, FWIW, trinity is showing up more and more in my random google searches. Either google is creepy and recognizes my vocabulary from my posts here or, I suspect, we may be becoming more of a target for googlebombs due to pagerank smoking dope.
ed |
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sardisson
Town Crier
Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:20 am Post subject: |
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| OPENSTEP wrote: | Also, FWIW, trinity is showing up more and more in my random google searches. Either google is creepy and recognizes my vocabulary from my posts here or, I suspect, we may be becoming more of a target for googlebombs due to pagerank smoking dope.
ed |
Ed, there's still a lot of linkspam crap in old, old trinity stories. I think you closed comments on them but maybe didn't actually delete the spam comments. It's a tedious task, I'm sure, because at least for normal users there's no way of getting a full list of stories, so you have to go month-by-month in each topic (/J /C GNU etc.) and each language to cover all the posts.
Further, I just posted this in your thread about searching in Neo/J Support, but Google is indexing the "quote" reply pages and the "topic review" pages that go with a reply; I don't know if there's any way you can tweak the PHP to put noindex stuff on just those kinds of pages....
Smokey
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"[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki |
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OPENSTEP
The One
Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:30 am Post subject: |
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Yeah, as to the quote reply indexing, I may be able to add in a "noreply" meta tag to those pages generated by the php. Google recommended that practice, but my customized phpbb isn't following it. It's on my todo list.
I haven't removed old comment spam from b4 i restricted article posting to registered users. It's only the forums that are still open to anon users. If you really want it deleted, just PM it to me (or post it, not recommended since it could result in the reindexing of a googlebomb). I'm much more vigilant on the forums then the stories since the forums are where the meaningful content is 
ed |
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sardisson
Town Crier
Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:44 am Post subject: |
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| OPENSTEP wrote: | | If you really want it deleted, just PM it to me (or post it, not recommended since it could result in the reindexing of a googlebomb). |
When I get bored I'll sit down and come up with a list of the stories with the stuff in it.
One more off-topic post: regarding making the Neo/C forums read-only, you should be able to go into the phpBB Admin panel (I assume that still exists in the nuke-integrated version?), select "Permissions" from the "Forum Admin" section, and for each of the three fora in turn, 1) "Look Up Forum" 2) "Advanced Mode" 3) set "Post" and "Reply" to "Admin" and 4) "Submit" Then only you can post there
Smokey
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"[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki |
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OPENSTEP
The One
Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
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| Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:55 am Post subject: |
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schizer, i hadn't thought of that. instead, i just locked the entire forums. makes perfect sense as the only reason i'm leaving them online is for historical reference. already i've had to search back through them myself to refresh myself on what i did with salsound
ed |
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ovvldc
Captain Naiobi
Joined: Sep 13, 2004
Posts: 2352
Location: Zürich, CH
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| Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 8:45 am Post subject: |
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If you feel like closing forums to anonymous posting, I suggest closing the Development forums first, since few non-members have any business there. If a 'you cannot post here' can be customized to say that (1) you must be registered and (2) support questions should go in support, that would be even better.
But I am perfectly willing and fairly able to aid in moderating the forums .
_________________
"What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi |
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OPENSTEP
The One
Joined: May 25, 2003
Posts: 4752
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
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| Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2005 7:52 pm Post subject: |
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Well, I think I'll still leave everything anonymous poster enabled until there's a need not to. I really think it's much better, personally. It's one of the reasons I didn't want to do this stuff on a mailing list...it's a bit more accessible, esp. to anonymous or "one time" posters (as a mailing list requires you to monitor replies and winds up giving your e-mail address out to harvesting bots)
ed |
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val1984
Oracle
Joined: May 30, 2005
Posts: 229
Location: France
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sardisson
Town Crier
Joined: Feb 01, 2004
Posts: 4588
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pluby
The Architect
Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949
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| Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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FYI. I usually delete any spam postings that I run into so if you are wondering where they go, I am deleting them.
Patrick |
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