A solution to the spam problem

[the Jester]

So, with the new board you've promised to import all the old threads and users.

But do you really have to?...

>snip stuff<

So sure, everyone would have to create new accounts. And sure, they'd all lose their precious XP and post counts and join dates. But everyone, at some point, has to make sacrifices for the betterment of a society. People WILL get over it. And you'll have a far more accurate picture of your actual users.

So inconvenience a large percentage of the user base to deal with what isn't really a problem anyway?

I don't think that's a very good suggestion.

 

[Kzach]

So inconvenience a large percentage of the user base to deal with what isn't really a problem anyway?

I don't think that's a very good suggestion.

Not if you wanted to inconvenience everyone for your own selfish and evil agenda.

*cackles with glee as he rides off on his broom*

 

[drothgery]

FWIW, the email address I'm registered with here is my college alumni account. The email address I mostly use now is at a domain I own, but is set up to be a front end to a free email service. And while I have an email address from my ISP, the email account there is hosted by another free email service.

 

[Rhyssa]

Forcing folks to use ISP emails only would alienate tons of users here who may only lurk rather than post.

For the other site that you keep touting using ISP addresses only, how do you know this for sure? I'd think having an email confirmation would make far more sense since it's an extra step in the process plus it forces people to use real emails (even if from a free email service) rather than just making something up.

Or if it's that tragic to see the occasional spam post, the permissions can be set that new accounts need X amount of posts before having a signature and/or putting any links into posts. It's not that hard to do, actually.

 

[jonesy]

Spacebattles.com has a system for handling spam where you can't make posts in the other sections until after you've made your first post in the introductions forum. I don't know how well that works for them though (I suppose someone could make a normal looking introductory post, and then go spam spam spam in the other sections).

I'm trying to be good so I'm only left now with irony and sarcasm

If those would get banned I'd be in serious trouble.

 

[frankthedm]

So, with the new board you've promised to import all the old threads...

But do you really have to?

Information, thoughts and opinions don't have an expiration date.

 

[Kzach]

Information, thoughts and opinions don't have an expiration date.

Sure it does; whenever a new edition comes out!

*boom*tish*

 

[Janx]

Does anyone use ISP email addresses anymore? (It's just not very smart to rely on.)

I concur. I tell everybody I end up helping to NEVER use an email account from your ISP.

A person should expect to fire their ISP every year and adopt a practice that makes that trivial to do. Hotmail and Gmail are pretty much the Global Email Providers that most likely won't be going away.

Even though my ISP provides me with an email automatically, I don't check it and I told them to use the email address I give them to send me mail. Any ISP that does not understand their role in the relationship in the 21st century is an ISP that does not understand that they are simply packet passers.


As to the general concept of blocking by IP, there are unintended consequences and complexities to that idea.

One example of good idea gone bad is where a manager told his IT staff to block all traffic from China. Worked great until the evening, when Google shifts its load over its chinese servers. So attempts to visit google were failing because responses were coming back from China.

Furthermore, the magic and mystery of the IP address has changed over the years. Once upon a time, every PC got an IP address that was directly reachable from any other PC on the internet. Nowadays with firewalls and Natural Address Translation (NAT), the IP address your PC actually has is likely to be 192.168.1.X where X is a number 1-255. Your firewall or router may have an internet-reachable IP address, but nothing in your house or company does.

This means that multiple users inside your firewall all show up as the same IP address when they both browse this site.

It's also not as simple as every address that starts with 101 to 125 is a chinese address.

It's also not hard for a Chinese spammer to lease a linux server in the US and then setup email accounts on that and to send out from there. Or to even remote-control browse from the server to american servers (so it will have an American IP address). There's no magic backtrace that could show that the server is being driven remotely from the perspective of Enworld.


There's better ways to block bots. Using the goofy graphic text you have to re-enter is effective, and you're actually helping a document scanning project (those snippets come from an OCR project that has stumbled on those characters).

Requiring an initial post in an Introduction area is also probably reasonable. As is doing an email verification to prove your really you. Both mostly require a human to take the time to go through the process.

 

[Umbran]

A person should expect to fire their ISP every year and adopt a practice that makes that trivial to do.

For most people, ISPs (especially for residential broadband) are like utilities - they don't have many choices, such that firing them every year makes little sense.

This means that multiple users inside your firewall all show up as the same IP address when they both browse this site.

EN World doesn't have so many users that this is apt to be a major issue. There just aren't that many households that have multiple EN Worlders in residence, and fewer still that have one of them be problematic, and the other not.

 

[Janx]

For most people, ISPs (especially for residential broadband) are like utilities - they don't have many choices, such that firing them every year makes little sense.

I don't literally expect people to actually fire their ISP every year. But I've had 4 ISPs over 15 years. My hotmail email address was never impacted.

People move. Using your ISP's email address needlessly entangles you, whereas a major web-mail provider does not.

Furthermore, most ISPs set you up with a POP3 account and a crappy web-interface. This puts your mail on your PC and not where your mobile device can get to it.

Thus far, the most superior configuration I have found is gmail, which has IMAP and Exchange opened up. You can use Outlook with it if you are inclined. Your iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry can all do GoogleSync and keep email, contacts and calendar in sync with the web and devices. it's better than the limited iCloud solution Apple has.

EN World doesn't have so many users that this is apt to be a major issue. There just aren't that many households that have multiple EN Worlders in residence, and fewer still that have one of them be problematic, and the other not.

It's not just houses. Companies and schools do the same thing. So one IP blocking from a bad user at work can take out an entire school of potentially valid users. I worked at a fortune small-number company full of nerds who played D&D. Bound to be a few enworlders there.

My point being, I support not blocking by IP because there are such complexities that aren't immediately obvious when such ideas are proposed.