2008-04-25 17:27:48

Hi guys,
The guest room is read only, because it suffered from of enormous amounts of spam. This means no-one can post to this room. I think we could also delete it, as it has no function. Does anyone have objections to the deletion of this room?

2008-04-25 17:51:22

is there a way to reinstate it with further spam protection? this way people can still post and test out the forum before deciding to register.
Although, most people register without posting, or most are people who returned from the old forum (for those who don't know, i'm in the returning lot.) if there is no way to get the guest room more spam protection, however, i say delete it.

2008-04-25 17:55:10

In so far as I know the only spam protection available here is by IP, which is of limited use since this can be got around, or by email confirmation. The latter isn't really practical for a guest room.

There is the potential for using words, but unless I'm mistaken that is more under censorship than actual prevention.

Mainstream sites which allow posting of comments and so on without registration invariably use captias, also known as visual verification. It is fairly obvious these won't work here, and if you've ever used a sound captia you'll know how ungodly horrible they sound.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-25 19:42:38

If it isn't deleted then don't allow links and use Email varification. Use Email varification to varify each post to see that it isn't spam. Sample if you post a message, it will get sent to your email and you click on a link in the Email to post it. If this doesn't work then delete it.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2008-04-26 07:11:36

Nah. I say throw it out. It's just read-only and serves no purpose whatsoever, sure there's email varification and all that jazz, but really when it comes down to it there's no point in it.

2008-04-26 08:45:59

hmm, there might be some sort of captia which I don't really know how effective it is, but you could have some kind of calculation which you need to fill in, or fill in how many letters are in the word x where x is the word. For added protection, have many really simple things that you need to fill in, and do not just use one string, ie, what is. Instead, try using things like tell me the answer to, how many letters are in, compute, answer this question, etc. again, i don't know how effective it is, but might consider giving it a try.

2008-04-26 08:48:14

E-mail verification for such a room would not seem to make sense to me, sinse people might as well officially register anyway.

I can really see the original point of the guest room, sinse it's a really great idea to allow people just to ask questions and post without commiting to registration, but it does occur to me that as topic creation is now closed in there, ---- all be it as  a necessary anti-spam measure, it's not really fulfilling it's original purpose anyway, and thus you could considder deleting it.

Instead, I'd suggest you put an apologetic disclaimer on the front page of the forum, explaning that obviously visual verification isn't a good idea for the site, and asking people to please register as official members in order to post. You could also considder creating a "guests welcome" thread stuck to the start of the general discussion or news room forums, and allow unregistered people to post there, ---- sinse keeping track of one thread and removing spam from it wouldn't be such a task.

Just some of my thoughts.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-04-26 11:15:05

If the guest room is deleted, how about moving the topics to general game discussion that way new visitors can see the questions and stuff that was discust.

2008-04-26 11:54:26

Of course, we can always move the topics that are interesting enough to keep to the general discussion.
Leaving a guest posting option open without any verification will cause the moderators a lot of extra work.
Email verification for guest posting is irrelevant as it is just as easy to register.
Visual captcha's are not an option for the sake of accessibility and soundcaptcha's are awful.

Erhm...shall we delete it after the moderators have moved some interesting topics (most are closed anyway)?

2008-04-26 15:33:50

You know Arjan that is very good lateral thinking. If something like that could be practically implemented it would work well, though you could of course get people with certain disabilities who find certain questions difficult. If the right questions could be thought of then it would work well.

Perhaps something like "enter the current year, e.g. '2003'"? It would mean anyone wanting to get past it would have to specifically adjust the spambot to our site, and I think the whole purpose of spambots is to find forums and drop spam on them automatically.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-26 21:25:03

Hi, I think that all the topics that serve a purpose should be shuttled over to the General Discussion board. And everything stupid, lame, spammy, or closed, should be removed.

2008-04-26 23:19:53

In this particular case, signing up for the forum is really really easy. I figure that since it's not exactly the biggest or most sought-after forum in the world, we should just make it so you have to register to post. Period. Cuts way down on spam and still allows those who've actually shown some desire to post to express their thoughts.

As for the guest room? Keep what's salient, toss what's not, but I'd stick the lingering threads in whichever forum was appropriate.
Better suggestion: set up a read-only board called Archives which stores old topics from all the boards, that way there's no constans figuring-out of which topic is reinstated to which board. Moreover, if it could be arranged so that topics over x days old were automatically removed to archives, it might better streamline the board.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2008-04-27 01:43:18

I say get rid of it, & keep the useful or important topics

Connor

2008-04-27 07:47:18

Or just rename it "archive of guest room" and lock it up, that way noone has to trundle through it working out what might or might not be important.

I know we sometimes had parents asking about games for their son or whoever in there, perhaps an alternative would be having an article "where to begin" on the main page... or perhaps make it a sticky topic, but on the site would be more prominent. We could discuss what games and/or sites would be good to include first though.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-27 08:54:08

well fair enough if the spam bots are so extreme that even a single thread for guest welcome would be a nightmare. Moving some of the topics to General game discussion is probably a good idea, ----- though by the same tocan, they probably have to be un-closed. i do also like the archive of guest room idea just for laziness sake as well.

The problem with those sorts of question systems, is that you would have to allow page refreshing or a "new question" link, and I've heard of some spam bots which just refresh the page and continually type the same characters over and over again until things work, and undoubtedly the year would be something people would know.

If on the other hand we had questions, there's always a chance someone wouldn't know them, even if we thought they were obvious, eg: what is the name of the Jedi hero, who is son of Darth vader in star wars?

some people just haven't seen the film or come across it.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-04-28 08:31:52

Hmm the random character thing is quite possible.

On the other hand people knowing it isn't really a concern, except when it came down to people doing it out of malicious intent. True spambots wouldn't be a problem, I don't think they're going to alter a spambot just for our site.

Edit:
Alternative thought...
Set of radio buttons, "choose the highest/lowest number"?

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-28 08:51:53

I'm not sure on this one, but I have heard of spam bots which do character matching and button pressing based on the characters on a web page.

Perhaps a number of radio buttons, say 1-5, and a random maths question to answer, for example what's two pluss one?

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-04-28 11:02:30

I reopened the guestroom as a test.
Guests can post new topics, members can only reply (this way we prevent the guestroom from becoming a second discussion room).

I already had installed a plugin, but never activated it: URL posting is forbidden for guests so spam is useless. New members should wait two days before they can post a url.

Let's see if this works, if not, we can always delete it with one click.

2008-04-28 21:25:57

`Nicely done. The only problem i see in it is the occasional new game developer, which posts his url to the forum. oh well, i am sue they will be able to out smart the spambots and think of another way to write down the url, while spambots never do that.

2008-05-03 20:39:42

Not so sure about your point, I've seen one on the audio game maker forum talking about some www.spam_key which of course doesn't work. He has it both as a link and the addres. Does punbb have a spam filter?

"Actually, they're just super-advanced holograms created for the sole purpose of enriching a children's cardgame."

2008-06-02 21:14:53

I would consider deleting the guest room, because (as the other guys said) although the Guest room is a great place to ask questions, test the forum etc it's also a great place for spammers, and there's not a good and usable way to prevent spamming.

2008-06-02 21:28:38

Well it hasn't been so bad of late.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-06-15 03:15:24

I agree with the administration, it hasn't been as bad, and we should test it out. Maybe the spammers if we filter it out and have some way of filtering the urls out will stop targetting "this" part of the forum, if you know what I mean?

Regards,
Tristan
Trek Games, inc.

2008-06-16 04:19:03

why are most of the topics closed on the visitors forum?

Connor

2008-06-16 11:04:20

All of them are closed. Only the 'sticky' thread is open for guest posting.