ILB registered users only?

i think if scott makes Chris and/or you a mod that should deal with it fairly easily. it's nice when people randomly pop in and it's not like there's a whole lot of spam to delete.

and it's been quite nice having some threads revived.

Sounds good to me.

Well, maybe we should just send up the Scott Signal and tell him Chris has offered to mod.

Does he even read his own board here? I think he spends more time on the noize board.

He posted to the "Whatcha readin'?" thread a few weeks ago, which is why I posted there. But now I've sent an e-mail. So we'll see.

Marvellous. Soon we will be rid of this unsightly spam and you will rule over us all!

Don't forget who your friends are.

(Me)

"Does he even read his own board here? I think he spends more time on the noize board."

HEY! I'm here. Mostly. Okay, not all the time, like some people, but I check it every day.

Yes, Chris, that is fine, Mod away. Er, how do we do that? I confess, I think I have used my almighty powers a grand total of once, and that was when someone started a duplicatge thread by accident. It was quite a hectic day!

i deleted the casino spam. Chris, you should be a moderator now. maybe you can start adding categories!! something i never got around to. can i put you to work?

Uh as soon as I figure out how to do this.

Hey I have little "admin" links now! Spiff!

If you insist on eating candy during lessons, Mr. Casuistry, you must share it with the rest of the class.

I don't know.

But I'm a dick because I don't like Joyce, so don't listen to me.

The increase of spam messages on ILB over the last few weeks is becoming more than a mere annoyance. As mentioned in the "what are you reading now" thread, I think it's time to revive the idea of registered users only so we can see if that helps.

It might cut down on the homework traffic as well.

i think quite a few of those go so far as to register, for reasons i don't really understand.

i'm vaguely against the idea of regs-only. but i don't have to delete the spam myself.

god, spam is such a dorky word.

It's a far dorkier concept. Spam is so fundamentally useless that I don't understand why so much time gets invested into its promulgation. I guess it doesn't take that much time (esp compared to cleaning it up).

So: it's now three or four or so a day, which is annoying but not unmanageable, but it feels like it will just keep growing.

I don't really have a problem with reg only (it's how every other message board on the planet works, reg is quick and easy, almost everyone who posts here with the possible exception of, what, anthony? is already reg'd, etc.). We could "test it out" for a week/month and see if it discourages spammers. Or not. If each individual thread is going to end up reg only because of spammers then we might as well make the board reg only.

Blah!

Would it be hard to add one of those CAPTCHA images for those who haven't registered? Seems the best way to fight off the spam-bots without losing the wonderful random surfers who don't wish to register.
CAPTCHA being these things: http://www.webstudio.cl/blog/wp-content/captchas/cap-gmail-captcha-01.png

Well, it's impossible for me to implement. Andrew is considering adding one for ILX 2.0 (or 3.0 I suppose!), when and if that happens.

I'm sure you'll spot it Chris, but there's more here: Pagination Staination

Can you block, or request a block on the ip? It seems like most of these were from the same place today (though possibly not the same ip).

Anyway, I'm all for reg only as a trial. It might be the best way to bring up all the disadvantages and advantages, with a real-world test, rather than just speculating about what might happen.

As a member of the forum I don't see registration as any kind of problem for me. Equally so, I don't see the current level of spamming as a problem for me either. In fact, it operates as a charmingly random thread revival mechanism.

But I do see where monitoring and removing the spam would be a burgeoning annoyance, quickly rising to the level of a royal PITA, for the moderator. Therefore, in the interest of moderator sanity, I think the benefits of registration-only would be compelling enough to merit implementing it as soon as possible.

i'll go along with what whatever people want. i'll try and help chris out with spam too as much as i can. i've been busy lately. i don't check every thread though...so, if people want to post links to new spam here i will get to it faster.

I've been posting the spam links to the moderator board - is it better to post them directly in ILB?

if you post them here, i will get to them. i check the board every day, i just don't check every thread every day.

I think the real problem with the spam isn't getting it deleted - it's that it's annoying, especially as this is a slow board, when one sees there are finally some new answers - only to click through and find out that half of the new answers are just spam gibberish (instead of insightful, new, wonderful comments).

I tend to check every thread every day, but sometimes I only check it through my RSS, which means that I only see the last post. And I usually check older threads that have revived to see if they were revived by spammers or not.

It's actually a slow process to delete spam -- it feels like it takes over a minute for the thread to load, the admin page to load, to edit the message, the "enter your password and reason why you made this change" page to load, then the confirmation page to load. Then, perhaps, to go back to the thread, to get to the admin page in order to make it reg-only, to enter password and reason, etc. I think that day we had like 4 threads with spam, that took about ten minutes.

So it is a bit of a pain, although nothing unmanageable yet.

"yet"

spam: April 2006: So, what are you reading?

got it.