Moderator Approval

[swarfrat]

Much as I hate it when boards do this, can we go to moderator approval for new people to post?

 

[ghotiphry]

I second the motion.

 

[stratamania]

I third the motion. The amount of Spam lately especially today is too much.

Quite happy to help and moderate if needed. I see a lot of it while the US is still asleep.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

This does seem like a practical step to consider.

 

[mayfly]

Kevin's a smart guy and has experience with other boards.  I think we should let him figure out a solution.

I will say that it is pretty annoying to find that some joker has crapped all over your thread!  Or threads as the case may be...

 

[AirCap]

Kill the spammers with fire.

 

[ghotiphry]

Kill the spammers with fire.

+1  Do they think that crap actually works?  What's the point?  Is it just to watch the world burn in some small way?

 

[BigSteve22]

Agreed. I'm all for new members, hell I've only been here far a couple of years, but the spam does seem to have increased disproportionately lately.  :sad1:

 

[AirCap]

+1  Do they think that crap actually works?  What's the point?

For the spammers, the point is to get paid.
It's the idiots who pay the spammers who are the real problem.

 

[Cagey]

The problem is once a 'bot figures out the way in, they use a VPN or something to continuously change the IP address they're sending from, so banning ID's or blocking IPs is ineffective. We may have to go the moderator approval block on new posts as these things are getting way out of hand.

 

[BigSteve22]

The problem is once a 'bot figures out the way in, they use a VPN or something to continuously change the IP address they're sending from, so banning ID's or blocking IPs is ineffective. We may have to go the moderator approval block on new posts as these things are getting way out of hand.

Any way to implement one of those "I'm a human" tests, like the ones where you have to type in the text displayed in an image, before you can post the first few times?  :icon_scratch:

 

[Cagey]

Ok, security has been cranked up. It was lightened up due to complaints by new users, but it seems we're getting a lot more spammers than new users, so...

 

[Fat Pete]

Maybe some of the regulars could be recruited as non-admin mods?

(Please don't read this as volunteering.)

 

[Cagey]

We could do that, but I'm not sure how that would work out. There are three admins now, which for a board of this population/popularity should be more than enough. You have to be careful not to get into a situation where your mods are chasing ghosts because somebody's already taken care of something, or where they end up behaving like a 4-way stop where nobody's sure who's up so remedial action doesn't happen at all. And while history has shown this to be an unusually well-behaved forum, you want to keep the "court" small enough that it doesn't get to where you need a vote to accomplish anything in the event an otherwise civilized user starts losing it.