The bot issue

[Solnoid]

Ladies and gentlebeings, as you may have no doubt noticed, our lovely forum has become infested with advertising Bots. Unfortunately, due to the way the forums are designed, our moderators cannot ban the accounts involved, although they can terminate the offending posts.

For your own safety, and that of your computers, I recommend you do not follow any links in posts advertising anything. If you trust the person posting, then by all means, go ahead and follow those links. However, many of the advertisements will lead to either questionable sites, or porn sites.

If you do see a post that seems questionable (or outright advertising/porn) please contact a moderator or ignore the post until it is deleted. Please do not follow the links. That only validates what they are doing. Many of these posts are being taken care of as they occur, but we all need to work together to defeat this threat until such a time as the site administrator can find out how the bots are able to create accounts and close the security hole.

---Sarge

[aNGST]

Apparently we can't sticky threads anymore either.

[Xombie]

I was just thinking of bring this issue up.

If there are two things I could suggest, even though its up to the administrator and or site html designer...
A report system for Thread starters. I cant find a button to directly report threads. If interested in this idea, I know where to find a template for a code to better report threads by placing a button that posts a message in a mods only board on the forum. Though I know the code for my own InvisionFree/Power board system, Im sure a phpBB version is available.

and also, a stricter registration system with CAPTCHA fields to hinder "bots"


so as of right now, PMs are fine for reporting said threads?
and if so, any mod in particular? Right now I have been sending pms to Mosquito, I tend to see him around more.

[Solnoid]

unfortunately, the only ones who can make any changes to the board setup are admins.

---Sarge

[Number i]

Is it just my short time on the forum giving me an atypical sample, or are the bots positng more than the pepole?

[JimmyJoeDerp]

Yes, the bots are posting more than the people.

But realize this, the people in charge of the site deserve an epic "Nice job breaking it, hero."

[banzaimonkey]

Heyo folks,

We've had a changing of the guard here at MA, and it took us a bit to get back on top of the clean and ban procedure. We've temporarily disabled new registrations until we can find a more permanent and less time-consuming method of spam prevention / removal. If you see any remaining spam or inappropriate posts, please contact me or use the Report Post feature.

Thanks,

banz

[Misquito]

WHOA! A real admin! I'm glad something's been done about the bots, it was getting crazy deleting 2 pages of them. Does the new guard have any plans for MA?