Message Board updates

[JC]

Nothing's changed. There's always been that feature. It's supposed to help stop spam attacks.

[Doc]

Nothing's changed. There's always been that feature. It's supposed to help stop spam attacks.

Which we've been getting way too much lately. So, JC set up a new registration way. Activation by Admins.

[JC]

Tell you what, JL. The spamming has stopped for the last few days. If we get a couple more, though, I'll be sure to set up registration by admins.

[manuel]

So you also have spam problems?  What is it with those spammers.
At the other forums where I'm admin we had to implement admin authorisation for new members, because of tons of spam. Now I have Up to 30 "activate new member" mails in my mailbox every day.
It's really annoying. 

Good luck with the forums, anyway.
After I finished my thesis I hope to be around here more often again.
I like Famicom World.

[Doc]

Yeah, we're doing admin activation over here, too. The spamming gets annoying, but sometimes you can catch the spammers before they register.

[manuel]

How do you do that?
We tried to disallow certain names and email addresses, but the number of those is infinite, so you can't  ban all.
If you have any tips, those would be greatly appreciated.

[JC]

Actually, we're not doing admin activation yet. We're doing new member self-activation. It seems to have at least slowed down the spammers. We were getting about three a week for a while, but it has been almost none since instituting self-activation. I hope we don't have to do admin activation.

The only tip I can give, and it isn't much of one, is to have mods who spend a lot of time on the forum. Or at least have mods that'll guarantee there's almost always a mod online. We've been able to delete spam posts pretty quickly.

[manuel]

Lately we had about 3 spammers a day who'd post between 18 and 21 random sex messages. That was annoying.
And then there were lots of others who posted 1 or 2 messages. It got overhand, so we had to do admin activation.
Unfortunately the site owner of our forums isn't interested in it any more, so we can't implement many changes. We 2 admins can only do as much as the phpbb menus let us do.

[Doc]

Weird...I've been going to the admin center and have been able to activate accounts...I always thought we were doing that.

[JC]

Oh. Um. I know I never set it up to do admin activation, just member self-activation...but I'm sure it also allows you to activate accounts.

[JC]

The first attempt at updating the forum didn't go so well. So, please, if you find any errors, let us know immediately. For instance, I was forced to reset my password. Don't know why.

[JC]

The forum is still in the process of being updated. By tomorrow night, the forum should be fully updated.

Note that tomorrow the forum will be shut down, likely for an hour or two, while I make the final change to the new version.

[Doc]

Just a reminder everyone that it'll soon be time to upgrade again. If you're wondering why so soon, it's because our lazy butts took so long to upgrade before.

[JC]

No, no...it's not our fault. SMF discovered bugs and updated their files, passing them on to us for an update.

[JC]

"Suggestions" board is now merged with the "Updates" board into the "Updates and Suggestions" board. We decided that the "Suggestions" board was too slow (no posts since Aug. 1) to be its own board.