Post Approval

[simpilot]

There have been a number of comments in the shoutbox regarding the delayed approval of posts and comments from new users.

Unfortunately, the forum's spam blocker has expired and the forum is being overcome by the spam posts and new spam members. The only way that we could combat this at first was to lock all new members down to have to have their first 5 posts approved by a moderator prior to allowing all the posts to be automatically visible. This was a valid solution for a while but at this point it is very time consuming to dig through all the new posts and comments that need approval, especially when the topic titles are not on point.

I have attached a few images to show what I am speaking of, cap1 is the first page of unapproved new topics, and cap2 is the last page of unapproved new topics. Yes, it is currently 379 pages long, which is just over the last two weeks. (379 pages x 10 per page = 3,790 items that need to be moderated)

I can not speak for other moderators, but I do not have the time, or patience for that matter, to dig through these posts to find what is legit and what is not.

I will offer that if you have a post that needs approval and can email me a link to the post directly, I will approve the post for you when I can. This may take a little while as I do not spend all my time patrolling this forum. DO NOT send me a PM here in the forum. I receive many every day including from spam users and have quit reading and responding to them quite some time ago.

email: david <at> simpilotgroup <dot> com

[Sava]

Why don't you employ a better security question? What color is a red car? is a really bad one as it already includes the answer

[joeri]

security settings are for Nabeel and not for us mods. i will follow Dave iff you send me an email with the link i can approve it

[servetas]

David and joeri, i can help you if you need me. I have plenty of time available, just drop me a pm.

[Kyle]

Those spam are coming in daily, and hammering the crap out of the approval que's right now. I'm working on this to go through it each day as it may take a while.

[joeri]

Kyle thats an lost effort i also tried it some time but it was not doable

[BaRBeR]

It looks like everything is going into off topic banter so, why don't you guys just lock that forum until the spam is under control?

[pupsyaus]

May I suggest you add some question and answer challenges for those who register (its in the IPBoard settings). I have it set in our forums and have never had a spam bot since (even with the spam filter on or off, it hasn't detected any since March when I first set the questions). I have two questions set - Type this number in backwards - xxxxxxx, and type this words backwards - xxxxxx (some random jumble of letters). I have found this to be much more reliable then captcha or anything like that since you can just change the questions to suit your needs or whenever someone gets through (again, haven't changed in 6 months and nothing yet - touch wood!).

[simpilot]

Why don't you employ a better security question? What color is a red car? is a really bad one as it already includes the answer

Nabeel has the only access to the security setings. There is also a large percentage that are coming from people that are paid to set up as many of these accounts as they can.

[simpilot]

David and joeri, i can help you if you need me. I have plenty of time available, just drop me a pm.

You will have to contact Nabeel to be added as a moderator, none of us have the permissions to add anyone to the moderators list. Any help I am sure would be appreciated by the forum members.

[simpilot]

It looks like everything is going into off topic banter so, why don't you guys just lock that forum until the spam is under control?

Been down that road, the spammers just will go to the next board untill they find one they can post in. The announcements board is locked for general posts, that is why they land in off-topic now, if we lock that then it will just end up in the five-dev hosting board.

[simpilot]

May I suggest you add some question and answer challenges for those who register (its in the IPBoard settings). I have it set in our forums and have never had a spam bot since (even with the spam filter on or off, it hasn't detected any since March when I first set the questions). I have two questions set - Type this number in backwards - xxxxxxx, and type this words backwards - xxxxxx (some random jumble of letters). I have found this to be much more reliable then captcha or anything like that since you can just change the questions to suit your needs or whenever someone gets through (again, haven't changed in 6 months and nothing yet - touch wood!).

It is an interesting concept, might be worth trying if Nabeel would like to add it. I would be curious how many hits a day your forum is getting though compared to this one.

[pupsyaus]

Probably not as much as here, but enough that it was getting crazy. But like I said, once the questions were on, it was harder for spammers to register. I also added a question to the registration form for the VA and that stopped spammers as well.