[JGZinv]

Got a new member trying to join the forum and his account is being blocked as spam related.
Could one of the admins take a look and fix please?

User:  DML
Email:  (removed for privacy sake)
IP:  (removed for privacy sake)

[Mongoose]

Man, this is the third time in as many weeks.  I think the current system is starting to produce a few too many false positives for comfort.

[karajorma]

Added. Password sent to his email address.

[JGZinv]

Thank ya kindly.

[Goober5000]

Man, this is the third time in as many weeks.  I think the current system is starting to produce a few too many false positives for comfort.

Depends on what your threshold is.  I have no doubt that more than 10 times as many spam accounts would have been registered during that time.

[karajorma]

Yeah but we don't know how many people are simply walking away without registering. For all we know it could be ten times as high too.

[Mongoose]

Man, this is the third time in as many weeks.  I think the current system is starting to produce a few too many false positives for comfort.

Depends on what your threshold is.  I have no doubt that more than 10 times as many spam accounts would have been registered during that time.

I guess my point is that there's presumably a better solution out there that manages to block spammers for the most part without shutting out whole chunks of legitimate users.  That is, unless every other forum on the planet has to resort to this current system we're using.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Apparently, a certain chess forum has resorted to a chess puzzle CAPTCHA to keep bots out of their forum - I imagine it functions as well for spammers who don't know about chess, and hence have no business on that forum. I like the idea... We could do a quiz with things every gamer/sci-fi fan should know, or can be easily googled. That will certainly cut out the bots, and hopefully it'll be too much effort for human spammers as well.

[mjn.mixael]

Apparently, a certain chess forum has resorted to a chess puzzle CAPTCHA to keep bots out of their forum - I imagine it functions as well for spammers who don't know about chess, and hence have no business on that forum. I like the idea... We could do a quiz with things every gamer/sci-fi fan should know, or can be easily googled. That will certainly cut out the bots, and hopefully it'll be too much effort for human spammers as well.

We've talked about doing that at least twice already.... So, here's the abridged version.

People will complain that it can't be only FS stuff cause we aren't just an FS forum any more. A few others will insist we can't do a nameplate CAPTCHA cause the STOP font is tough for non-native English speakers. In the end we come to an agreement that someone along those lines would be a good idea.

[headdie]

how about something like.


Is this a GTF Perseus?

If you do not know click this link to see some images


Basically it calls on a persons ability to either look and know or to look at pre-existing images and decide if the one shows is close enough to say yes or no.  Because the image is not one shown in the page a direct image comparison will not work but a Human should be able to do it fairly easily.  Also because it allows the person to reference the question they dont have to have FS/Mod knowledge to be able to answer the question so long as we use angles which it is reasonable to draw a conclusion from

[The E]

The current captchas are good enough. Making captchas that require the person registering to know certain things about FS lore is a deterrent for humans more than bots.

The problem is more one of certain email addresses or IPs being flagged as spammy, which is something that has to be addressed at a different level.

[karajorma]

We already have a homespun CAPTCHA system based on entering a word from a scrolling display. I see no proof that any bots have actually beaten this system yet.

The spam we're getting almost certainly comes from human registrations.

[Black Wolf]

The current captchas are good enough. Making captchas that require the person registering to know certain things about FS lore is a deterrent for humans more than bots.

Such a system would be great for the wiki though, if it can be implemented on mediawiki.

[antsa]

Why people would even want to spam this site? Please enlighten me

[niffiwan]

In the vain hope that someone here will click a link and make them some money.  Or something like that.  You might as well ask why 90%+ of all email sent these days is spam...

[antsa]

Yeah, ad's
I just wonder why they bother websites relatively small i thought they had bigger sites under their attack

[yuezhi]

I think this site got huge with the release of Wing Commander Saga and Diaspora.

[General Battuta]

I think this site got huge with the release of Wing Commander Saga and Diaspora.

Definitely not.

[karajorma]

I suspect it has more to do with search engine optimisation. If you have forums all over the net linked to your website, it should get a higher ranking.

[Mobius]

I received an e-mail from a team mate who claims he created an account with "flaisgiorgos" being his nickname. The problem is that he cannot be found anywhere in our memberlist. Does it have anything to do with the issue reported by JGZinv?