FED UP

[trevnhil]

Hi Peter. You are correct of course and my knowledge of running Forums is almost nil.
But surely the administrators, Margaret and Geoff, have the power to 'vet' people when they join.
But as I said previously if you see when Willow' last posted it is weeks and weeks ago.
I find it just a great shame that it all appears to be going down the pan.

Regards. Trev..

[brian]

I've hosted several forums over the years and there's quite a lot can be done to control spam, as long as the admins have full control of the forum which I suspect may not be the case with these proboards. I'd be surprised though if there wasn't some mechanism that could be enabled to block the spammers.

Methods include admins approving all new registrations, captcha codes and email validation.

If anyone has Margaret or Geoff on facebook, can you ask them if they've given up with the forum?

I've got the space, bandwidth and free software to host a forum elsewhere. This sounds awful but I don't want to host another forum after the hassle I've had previously. Although I could give admin control to someone else, as the host I'd be as liable as the admin(s) for any issues with the forum and I don't want to be contacted by the police, again, when someone does something like suggest they know the result of some postal votes before election day - as if that would ever happen I don't mind giving advise if anyone else has US$108 per year to spare.

[accykeef]

The existing one is fine as long as the admin is kept up to date.
I can't remember if there is any protection on the sign up process of this forum but even if there is, most if not all anti spam measures can be bypassed if the spammers are signing up and adding posts manually.

I am webmaster on a private forum and a system I added there allows members not only to report spam but if more than 3 members report a thread it is automatically removed and flagged for a mod to check. This could be open to abuse but as members are accountable, genuine posts are very rarely removed. It is a very busy forum so on average any spam only stays on there for a fw hours at most, usually a lot less than that.

I have always failed to see how the administrator of a forum can be responsible for what is posted and think that member moderation is the best method. Unfortunately, we do have some crazy laws in this country which make no sense to common peasants such as me.

[trevnhil]

Those of you who are observant, will have seen that things are happening.

Oh yes they are.

Regards. Trev..

[coachman]

Hello everyone,
Unfortunately, Willow and I have been rather tied up recently but after seeing the extent of spamming on the forum, Willow has promised that she would sort it all out at the earliest opportunity (Hopefully tonight)

I believe her intentions are to divert potential new members to admin before being able to contribute to the forum. This should (hopefully) stop these spammers

In the meantime, does anyone want a comp? ;D

[trevnhil]

Dec 3, 2011 18:02:15 GMT coachman said:

Hello everyone,
Unfortunately, Willow and I have been rather tied up recently but after seeing the extent of spamming on the forum, Willow has promised that she would sort it all out at the earliest opportunity (Hopefully tonight)

I believe her intentions are to divert potential new members to admin before being able to contribute to the forum. This should (hopefully) stop these spammers

In the meantime, does anyone want a comp? ;D

Good evening Geoff.
As you will probably know I have spoken (email) to Margaret, and the main thing from her reply is that she intends that the forum will continue. This to me was the main item on the agenda, and I am very pleased that it will remain.

I think everyone will sympathise when she says that she is busy. These modern times seem to leave few spare moment left.

The mention of trying to cut the Spam out before it starts seems good if it can be done.

As to the question about a quiz... yes please. Just remember that there are fewer regulars at the moment.

Regards. Trev..

[WillowTheWhisp]

First of all I do apologise for not having been here lately. Over the past couple of months I seem to have been meeting myself coming back and about the only place I've been online, as Trev has observed, has been Facebook and even then I haven't always had as much time to respond to things concerning friends there as I would have liked.

The main change in my routine is the fact that I now teach on a daily basis with an additional evening class on Tuesdays, and what with the preparation required for all that I just haven't had as much time to myself as I used to have.

There are two basic things I need to get on top of here - one is a bit of 'housekeeping' - tidying up the buttons etc which I started doing way back in August! However, my main priority will be to stop these infernal spammers which are a pain and making the place look untidy. The odd one or two wasn't so bad but it's been getting out of hand I see in our absence. Keef has been reporting them but I haven't been receiving the reports either which is part of the same silly problem where people weren't getting their activation emails. That is why I made it so that new members didn't need to activate in order to post, and of course that has now let in all and sundry.

However......................... there's more than one way to skin a rabbit and I'm now going to put up a fence and a gate so they'll have to ring the bell to get in and if they look like being a waste of time then they won't get over the threshold.

I get a fortnight off at Christmas so I should have lots more time then to do things here but I'll try to reschedule myself too so that I can check in at least once a day to just have a quick look round too.

[trevnhil]

Hi Margaret.
It's good to have you back and I think we all sympathise with you re lack of 'free' time.
I personally am pleased that the forum has a captain again, and that it's immediate future seems OK.

I enjoyed tales of your visits to different places. The one where you had only had a shower cap on but no water will stay in my memory.

Cheers. Trev..

[WillowTheWhisp]

It wasn't even a shower cap - it was a carrier bag!! ;D