Some notes on Spam Control & New Users

Lol, I'm never against more bot-proofing. ;-)

Morrus said:

No, seriously - we know it's a bit onerous. It is necessary, though (and, hey, it's productive: it encourages you to engage with the community by posting!) 10 posts will fly by so quick you won't even notice it, and then you'll be able to post links to your heart's content. We'll keep an eye on this, and will modify it if necessary. We promise we're not trying to inconvenience you, but to make your usage of the forum a more overall pleasant experience.

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There are other reasonable proxies for enough trust, such as a well-established Facebook account linked to your account...

This is weird. The last post as indicated on the topic listing is not the same as the last post in the thread.

frandallfarmer said:

There are other reasonable proxies for enough trust, such as a well-established Facebook account linked to your account...

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Are you volunteering to write the relevant code?

It's a decent idea, but for now we'll have to make do with the slightly inconvenient (but not really all that inconvenient) "make 10 posts" method. Which, for all its flaws, is pretty much 100% foolproof. New ideas like this one are at the end of a long line of things that need doing in the rebuilding-and-fulfilling-Kickstarter-goals scheme of things.

Morrus said:

Are you volunteering to write the relevant code?

It's a decent idea, but for now we'll have to make do with the slightly inconvenient (but not really all that inconvenient) "make 10 posts" method. Which, for all its flaws, is pretty much 100% foolproof.

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Dude - assuming everyone might be a troll and imposing a specific task that is generating lots of "here's another post to meet my requirement" (which I found several places) indicates it IS inconvenient - I was ready to walk away if it was higher than 10 - so some completely legitimate users are leaving because of this new hoop. Did any of your original members have to do this? If not, I'm telling you that this is a pain, and if everyone had to do it they'd complain to no end.

Did you try 5? Do you need 100%? If someone writes a bot to do this, will you just jack up the number?

And, why doesn't the text that appears after I've carefully crafted my post with images and URLs say "You need a total of X posts before..." instead of the vague "a few"? I hope that's not to keep it a secret from the spammers, because it's another example of penalizing innocent users to protect yourself from spam.

I know you're busy - but bouncing new users should probably be decently high on your problems list.

frandallfarmer said:

Dude - assuming everyone might be a troll and imposing a specific task that is generating lots of "here's another post to meet my requirement" (which I found several places) indicates it IS inconvenient - I was ready to walk away if it was higher than 10 - so some completely legitimate users are leaving because of this new hoop. Did any of your original members have to do this? If not, I'm telling you that this is a pain, and if everyone had to do it they'd complain to no end.

Did you try 5? Do you need 100%? If someone writes a bot to do this, will you just jack up the number?

And, why doesn't the text that appears after I've carefully crafted my post with images and URLs say "You need a total of X posts before..." instead of the vague "a few"? I hope that's not to keep it a secret from the spammers, because it's another example of penalizing innocent users to protect yourself from spam.

I know you're busy - but bouncing new users should probably be decently high on your problems list.

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Because I am part way into rebuilding the entire website after it was hacked and destroyed 3 months ago, and I have to work with what we've got for the moment. Those are the emergency tools I currently have available. I'll have more later, but we've a long way to go. No amount of pointing out how the situation isn't ideal is going to speed that up - there's a LOT of stuff that isn't ideal right now, and we're working on it.

Please be patient. 3 months ago I didn't even have a website. Now THAT was a detriment to getting new users, I can tell you. This? Maybe a little, but not so much.

No, I don't particularly like it, either. But it works (prior to that we were getting 250K spamposts a week - which had the additional effect of bringing the site down completely; another thing users seemed to find inconvenient). For a month or so after that, we had registration shut off completely -- that also didn't exactly help gain new users.

I appreciate it's a pain. It is. But it's what we currently have, and it's better than what we recently had. I'm working on rebuilding everything, and yes, there are many, many things that need fixing or rebuilding. I'm sorry about that, but berating me for it isn't going to help any.

As for it being "secret" -- there's a big yellow notice at the top of the page for every new user telling them exactly how many it is. It reads:

Welcome, {username}! Thanks for joining us! You haven't posted yet, but please feel free to do so - we'll try to make you feel welcome! If you have any problems posting, drop me an email at morrus@hotmail.com and I'll see if I can help. A couple of notes - due to all the spambots we get, there are a few things you won't be able to do until you've made 10 posts. This isn't to annoy you, I promise! Thanks again for joining us, and happy posting!

Morrus said:

No, I don't particularly like it, either...

I appreciate it's a pain. It is. But it's what we currently have, and it's better than what we recently had. I'm working on rebuilding everything, and yes, there are many, many things that need fixing or rebuilding. I'm sorry about that, but berating me for it isn't going to help any.

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Understood. Sorry - I didn't mean to berate you. Honestly, if you'd said in your first reply what you say above, instead of seemingly dismissing the effect on new users as "not all that inconvenient" I would have just said, "Thanks for hearing me!" You're overloaded, and when I'm overloaded, I can say similar things under stress. Good luck bringing this place back. I'd always wanted to check it out.

I got some snark from one of the mods and I think it spilled over onto you a bit. Please, accept my apologies. I've been a CEO of a social media company. I know what you're going through.

Though I'll personally ignore the dust and construction, I hope that your team values any feedback they get about improving the experience here - even if it will be weeks or months before it can be addressed.

Morrus said:

As for it being "secret" -- there's a big yellow notice at the top of the page for every new user telling them exactly how many it is. It reads:

Welcome, {username}! Thanks for joining us! You haven't posted yet, but please feel free to do so - we'll try to make you feel welcome! If you have any problems posting, drop me an email at morrus@hotmail.com and I'll see if I can help. A couple of notes - due to all the spambots we get, there are a few things you won't be able to do until you've made 10 posts. This isn't to annoy you, I promise! Thanks again for joining us, and happy posting!

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Oh, god. Apparently, I'm a complete idiot (or blind as a bat) and didn't notice that. Mea Culpa.

As feedback: Interesting that no one else replied with that information when I asked around...

robertzi said:

We are the borg. I am designation 1 of 10... the other 9 still need to be assimilated.

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[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION] I'm seeing a pretty weird little bug here. Under robertzi's profile (both the short one to the left of his post, and on the view profile page here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?6711830-robertzi ) I see that his post count is 0. But I can clearly see that he has two posts. Do posts in the Meta forums not count towards the limit?

frandallfarmer said:

Did any of your original members have to do this? If not, I'm telling you that this is a pain, and if everyone had to do it they'd complain to no end.

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While this was not a requirement when I joined the site, I am 100% sure that I had more than 10 posts under by belt before I ever posted a link or an image. The purpose of the boards is discussion, and the number of times that I've needed to use external links to discuss something is way lower than 10%. Posters like me might never even realize there's a break-in period.

Edit: And you ninja'ed me with your apologies, so I guess this defense of the practice is slightly unnecessary. Oh well.

frandallfarmer said:

Understood. Sorry - I didn't mean to berate you. Honestly, if you'd said in your first reply what you say above, instead of seemingly dismissing the effect on new users as "not all that inconvenient" I would have just said, "Thanks for hearing me!" You're overloaded, and when I'm overloaded, I can say similar things under stress. Good luck bringing this place back. I'd always wanted to check it out.

I got some snark from one of the mods and I think it spilled over onto you a bit. Please, accept my apologies. I've been a CEO of a social media company. I know what you're going through.

Though I'll personally ignore the dust and construction, I hope that your team values any feedback they get about improving the experience here - even if it will be weeks or months before it can be addressed.

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No worries. Sometimes I just assume people are aware of recent history without realising that I'm the only one who pretty much literally lives here!