Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

[Crimson Glow]

In light of all the spammers and bots that have swarmed us like fat people who had been stranded on an island, found civilization, and came across a buffet, is there no way to allow this software to make approval a requirement before a new member can join here? Several other sites I'm on have had to revert to this, and I'm pretty sure all php boards are capable of it. We could really use this on here, as well as on the "HyeSpace" part of this site. I'm tired of "girls" sending me messages telling me "remember itis not the colour or raceor distance that is matters only love matter a lot in lif" 4 or 5 times a week.

[freakyfreaky]

Re: Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

In light of all the spammers and bots that have swarmed us like fat people who had been stranded on an island, found civilization, and came across a buffet, is there no way to allow this software to make approval a requirement before a new member can join here? Several other sites I'm on have had to revert to this, and I'm pretty sure all php boards are capable of it. We could really use this on here, as well as on the "HyeSpace" part of this site. I'm tired of "girls" sending me messages telling me "remember itis not the colour or raceor distance that is matters only love matter a lot in lif" 4 or 5 times a week.

dude, its true, the ladies want you, bro.

[Siggie]

Re: Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

And what would we look at in order to decide who to approve? The name? The email address?

Hyeclub.com is a separate issue, but the forum at least does not have huge problem with spam as far as I know. The staff is on top of it.

[Sip]

Re: Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

Usually a very simple challenge question will do. Like ask them to say why they are joining this forum (and say it's ok not to have a reason!). Simply having the ability to answer the question with anything meaningful will filter out most of the bots IMO.

[Sip]

Re: Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

To make it more challenging, instead of asking the same question, you could have a list of questions and ask a different one each time. Something even a 5 year old could understand and answer could be surprisingly difficult for bots!

Examples are:

What color is this?
What number comes after three in this sequence: 1 3 7 9
What do you see during the day, the sun or the moon?

Stuff like that.

[Crimson Glow]

Re: Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

Actually, you CAN tell most of them by username. We've all seen the silly, non-Armenian related in any way, shape or form usernames of the spam bots that have infested this site recently. Does this site require an activation e-mail? I would have hoped that alone would be enough to make them fail.

BTW, we have plenty of them here, Siggie. Some of them went undetected for so long, I had to point them out to the mods while in the chatroom a little while back.

[Siggie]

Re: Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

Sip, I'll consider that. I also don't want potential members to lose interest after a day or so and not come back once approved.

Crim, I didn't look at the forum for 1 hour and missed 1 spammer who posted 2 things. I check the forum at least 10 times a day and while I can't speak for all the staff I think they're here more than once a day as well. The ones with obvious names, I delete before they even post.

[Federate]

Re: Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

Sip, I'll consider that. I also don't want potential members to lose interest after a day or so and not come back once approved.

Crim, I didn't look at the forum for 1 hour and missed 1 spammer who posted 2 things. I check the forum at least 10 times a day and while I can't speak for all the staff I think they're here more than once a day as well. The ones with obvious names, I delete before they even post.

Agree with this. While there are many bots that do invade the forum, they do not last for long as all their posts and their usernames are deleted. There's usually a mod/admin on the forum at all times anyway and their posts are easily spotted. Not really a problem, only a case of dusting off the place.

[Sip]

Re: Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

I wonder if Pepsi would have passed any of these checks ... the name check, or any of the question answering tests heheheheeh ... I crack myself up sometimes.

[Icy]

Re: Motion to make approval mandatory for registration

When i used to host my vBulletin forums a while back,
I had a program called Capache, it made users right a certain
sentence the program stated to register, I never had problems
with bots, I just had a couple problems with real life people doing
the jobs bots would normally do.