Guild of Writers

As a short-term solution, we could ban and delete every member who posts a "perfect forum" or "perfect website" post. That seems to be all the rage amongst spammers right now.

Jamey wrote:If it is indeed the same, I can't help but wonder why the GoMa, MOUL, UO, and other Uru-related forums haven't shown the same kinds of spam problems we have here.

You must not watch the MOUL forum close enough... It gets a decent amount of spam.

I.Brattin wrote:True but we can be stricter and still be friendly to other countries. All it would take is setting the board to require new users to authenticate themselves. PhpBB can do this I know. To be able to sign up it would require a legit email address, something most spammers do not give, as after sign up they get an email with instructions to authenticate their account. This would cut down on the number of spammers posting here as it would cut out all the bots.

This is already done. The spammers we see now are (for the most part) real buffoons. I have about 30 pages of bots that are trying to activate themselves on top of that.

hot milf

I have a new enemy.

On a forum I admin, one guy made a post with the usual med spam (OxyContin 80mg 40mg 20mg and 10mg, etc, etc).
This was flagged by a member so I prepared to delete and ban usual, presuming it was a bot, but to my surprise the account had 75 previous posts.

So I browsed his post history, and all his posts were generic stupid crap, exactly like spam bots do nowadays. I couldn't tell if he was human or not! He was failing the Turing test, which is a test of ability to demonstrate intelligence.

I had to ask on the forum if anyone actually knew him and if he was real. Turns out he is, he had pasted some spam as a joke. For some reason he had a problem with my appreciation of his intellectual abilities. He tried to come back at me in another thread and failed miserably.

This may be the only recorded instance of a human being failing the Turing test.

Chacal wrote:I have a new enemy.

On a forum I admin, one guy made a post with the usual med spam (OxyContin 80mg 40mg 20mg and 10mg, etc, etc).
This was flagged by a member so I prepared to delete and ban usual, presuming it was a bot, but to my surprise the account had 75 previous posts.

So I browsed his post history, and all his posts were generic stupid crap, exactly like spam bots do nowadays. I couldn't tell if he was human or not! He was failing the Turing test, which is a test of ability to demonstrate intelligence.

I had to ask on the forum if anyone actually knew him and if he was real. Turns out he is, he had pasted some spam as a joke. For some reason he had a problem with my appreciation of his intellectual abilities. He tried to come back at me in another thread and failed miserably.

This may be the only recorded instance of a human being failing the Turing test.

...wow


I weep for the future of the human race.

Jamey wrote:...wow


I weep for the future of the human race.

When the top most searched "news" stories are celebrity deaths and the personal lives of a pro-golfer, we all should weep for the future of the human race.

Tsar Hoikas wrote:[This is already done. The spammers we see now are (for the most part) real buffoons. I have about 30 pages of bots that are trying to activate themselves on top of that.

Wow... those are live people. I would never have guessed, I would have figured they were bots from the sheer number of times per week were being hit.

Wow,
That means there are actual human beings who are stupid enough to post totally unrelated stuff on a specialized forum.

Oh, wait, that's what I do here most of the time too
**whistles innocently***
/me said nothing, toootaaalllllyyyy nothing

Not only did this latest guy spam but he multispammed. 29 posts in the various forums here on GoW.

Are Spammers getting that desperate for people to read what their posting.

IP bans have been reapplied and several more countries are banned. This should help turn the volume down a bit... I imagine we'll still get a few rogue ones though.

I.Brattin wrote:Not only did this latest guy spam but he multispammed. 29 posts in the various forums here on GoW.

Are Spammers getting that desperate for people to read what their posting.

It's not so much about *people* reading it, it's about google seeing it so their page rank will increase.

An semi-efficient way to filter out these kinds of people at registration is by putting a pertinent Turing test in the registration process.
That is: extend the registration form with a simple Uru/GoW related question asking for a simple answer that any person actually interested in the GoW/Uru knows.
For instance: "Q: What items do the D'ni use to link to Ages? - A: Books"
The question must be simple enough that any Uru/Gow fan can know, and the answer must be simple enough so that it can't be mistyped.

It's not a perfect solution obviously but it helps, and it's easy to set up.

[Edit] Whoops; I just saw JWPlatt's reply in the other thread. Forget everything I just said.