Hello,

I was told that we have had an increase in spam recently. When a user joins our forum, their level is "Nibbie." In the past I set it after N days or N posts were met, they would get promoted to normal member. (Normal members don't need to get their posts approved.) It seems that some spammer simply wait until N days pass by before posting. So I set it so that ONLY N posts would allow you to get promotion. That should cut down on some of the spam.

Of course I need to update this forum to ensure there are no exploits being used by spammers. I'd like to ask all MODs to keep their eyes open for spammers, and to try to approve legit new members' posts. We have had an influx of new users recently due to iPhone interest.

If you have over 50 posts in this forum, please consider stepping up and becoming a MODerator.

Contact me if you are interested.

I heard that new members are unable to add their custom avatar. Is this true? What error are you receiving?

You turned off custom avatars for everyone but über-members a long time ago.

I for one think it should be available to all members.

* SethWillits wouldn't mind being a moderator.

I oft see spam that oughtn't exist.

Seth would make a fine moderator. He's been a channel operator in #idevgames for a little while now.

Is the system still set up so that your first unapproved posts count toward the N posts needed to be approved? I don't know how much flexibility vBulletin gives you, but it seems like what you'd really want is a system where new members are approved, rather than new posts. I was going to set something up for my own website where a new member's posts are visible only to themselves (to prevent multiple posting when their posts don't show up) until approved by a moderator, at which point they all become visible. Is there a way we could do something like that here?

There has definitely been a massive increase in spam volume over the last month or two. I wonder what brought it on...

>You turned off custom avatars for everyone but über-members a long time ago.
Fixed

>Seth would make a fine moderator. He's been a channel operator in #idevgames for a little
He was volunteered as today

>Is the system still set up so that your first unapproved posts count toward the N posts
>needed to be approved?
Should be that way yes. They post but their post needs to be approved.

There is a "reputation" system also available. So if you have enough "reputation" than you can become a regular member. You get these reputation points from MODs and other regular members.

Cheers

I just turned on Reputations. But I am unsure how it works.
lol

You just click on the little green box on the right of a post and click "I Approve" or "I Disapprove" to add or detract from somebody's rep, then you can leave a comment with your thoughts. Although I find most boards with this feature turned on, most people don't use it.

I don't really like the reputation idea. I also don't really like the idea that new members' posts need to be approved. It has turned away many potential members, which I know of from receiving private emails from folks using some of my code here. Of course, I also don't like forum spam either (who does?).

The problem I see going both ways on this issue is that the mods seem so much more attentive to deleting spam than approving new members' posts in a timely fashion (no offense to the mods).

I don't remember what the sign-up process is here, but surely there must be a better way to weed out the riff-raff at the door. At least there must be a way of fouling up the spam bots. Don't those image confirmations work for that?

I nominate AnotherJake for moderator.... he's one of the best members at the moment

OneSadCookie Wrote:I nominate AnotherJake for moderator.... he's one of the best members at the moment

…I nominate OSC…

The way I got rid of spam on my forums was to make it so that if a member has a zero post count, that member can't have a link in a reply or new topic. If the member does have a link in their reply or new topic, an error message is displayed explaining why they can't have a link there until they make a normal post and their post count is not increased.

This seems to work quite well, since if a spammer gets its post rejected because it has a link then that spammer's post count remains at zero, meaning that it still can't post

Obviously if you get a spammer that's just being a griefer and posting random text and what-not then this wouldn't really work, but I haven't had any problems with that so far

For the record, I'm not a big fan of the approval system either; post count seems to work just fine
-wyrmmage

I second a Mod vote for AnotherJake, he is often referring spam to us before any of the Mods get to it, plus I think he spends about 20 hours out of the day on the forum =)

+1 for AnotherJake (if he's up for it of course ).

Hmm, I'm an uber member (I think...) and I still can't access the uber member or upload avatars....

I've had problems upload avatars, I'll have to try again to tell you the error.