Hard Light Productions Forums
Site Management => Site Support / Feedback => Topic started by: General Battuta on April 28, 2012, 12:09:10 pm
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We've got a user named Wonz hung up at the authorization stage.
This spam filter is killing us. Is it really worth the false positives?
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Nope.
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How is it currently being handled anyway?
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A users registers, but requires Admin approval to post.
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can we let them PM admins at least, then we can actually tell they're real people.
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Better yet, we'll give you that responsibility and the swarms of new users can fill up YOUR pm inbox. :p
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Seeing as few people PM me anyway, I won't mind if I can activate their accounts.
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Look. It's pretty simple. We've already discussed how to get the spam filter turned off but no one is willing to get off their butts and do the one simple thing we asked them to (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80174.0).
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Surely there's an easier way? Rely on people's FS familiarity, or at least the ability to recognize a big old space ship.
Welcome to Hard Light Productions! Before you start, we need to make sure you're a human being. Identify the ship in the image below. If there is more than one ship, identify the most prominent vessel.
Remember, only include the name of the class, not the prefix (e.g. "Hecate" instead of "GTD Hecate").
***IMAGE***
Not a Freespace fan, or having trouble with spelling? Check the <link to wiki>gallery</link to wiki> or <link to refresh>try another image</link to refresh>.
Wiki link = http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/New_Account_Gallery
And the images for the user (Imagebin because I'm lazy and it's easy, get 'em before they disappear).
http://imagebin.org/210206
http://imagebin.org/210207
http://imagebin.org/210208
http://imagebin.org/210209
http://imagebin.org/210210
http://imagebin.org/210211
http://imagebin.org/210212
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Errr...
There's no way everyone registering at HLP even knows about FS, let alone names of ships. You know, people can register here for the total conversions like TBP, FotG, Diaspora, WCS that draw attention from fans of the TV-series and movies. Then there are people who come here for FS, but haven't yet played it at all. Hence they wouldn't know about any ship names either.
When you make it difficult to register by requiring registee to browse a random site for the captcha answer, chances are that he/she just leaves instead rather than bothering with that.
No, when you present someone a picture puzzle for captcha, the answer must be within the picture. Hence an animation that does not display full answer in any single frame should work pretty well.
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If you were gonna do that, I'd also put a link to the wiki article on the particular ship classes at the bottom, with instructions to check that if the user is not familiar with FS2-verse (you are likely to get people in here from TBP, WCS, BSG: Diaspora, even BtRL, and eventually FotG and StarFox (I forget the name for that one, sorry) EDIT: SoL and other non-FS2 TCs trying to register. So, just make a wiki article stating that these are the ships that are used in our spam prevention mechanism, and use different (techroom, maybe) shots in the wiki article).
Upon re-reading my post: Holy parenthesis, Batman!
EDIT: ninja'd
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Errr...
There's no way everyone registering at HLP even knows about FS, let alone names of ships. You know, people can register here for the total conversions like TBP, FotG, Diaspora, WCS that draw attention from fans of the TV-series and movies. Then there are people who come here for FS, but haven't yet played it at all. Hence they wouldn't know about any ship names either.
When you make it difficult to register by requiring registee to browse a random site for the captcha answer, chances are that he/she just leaves instead rather than bothering with that.
No, when you present someone a picture puzzle for captcha, the answer must be within the picture. Hence an animation that does not display full answer in any single frame should work pretty well.
Yep. Those animations sure would be great. Why aren't we using them again? Oh yeah... they don't exist yet. :doubt: Until someone makes them, we're losing more people to false positives and delayed admin responses than we will to people unwilling to click on a wiki link (And don't forget, we're still mainly a Freespace board. A good fraction of the people who want to register wont even need to go to the wiki). This is one of many cases where people do nothing because they can't implement the perfect system. This would be less than perfect, but better than what we have now, and can easily be replaced if the animations ever get made.
If you were gonna do that, I'd also put a link to the wiki article on the particular ship classes at the bottom, with instructions to check that if the user is not familiar with FS2-verse (you are likely to get people in here from TBP, WCS, BSG: Diaspora, even BtRL, and eventually FotG and StarFox (I forget the name for that one, sorry) and other non-FS2 TCs trying to register. So, just make a wiki article stating that these are the ships that are used in our spam prevention mechanism, and use different (techroom, maybe) shots in the wiki article).
Upon re-reading my post: Holy parenthesis, Batman!
EDIT: ninja'd
Not a Freespace fan, or having trouble with spelling? Check the <link to wiki>gallery</link to wiki> or <link to refresh>try another image</link to refresh>.
Have done exactly that. Check the wiki link I provided.
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Oh bloody hell, it's not that hard to generate gifs. There's bunch of online services to do that too.
Here's one: http://wigflip.com/signbot/
(http://i.imgur.com/xaBJi.gif)
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Okey doke. I'm triggering the rev_posix Bat-Signal to activate the mod with Fury's sample gif.
Is it really worth the false positives?
Nope.
Derp, well, shouldn't you defer to Zacam on that? Seeing as he's the one who has to deal with all the spam registrants, false positives or no...
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I wouldn't advise using the sample gif. Rather generate a dozen or so gifs that have three random words in random order. Perhaps add a bunch of numbers instead of one of the words.
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Ooh ooh ooh. Here's one. :D
(http://i.imgur.com/k6C5j.gif)
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Actually, the idea of using imagemagick to make one of these on the fly comes to mind... I'll have to look into how we could implement it, but that may be overkill unless the freaking bots start running hashes against the files (not likely, but possible).
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I was just going to use lines from FS2 missions and ask for the 3rd, 4th or 5th word.
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Actually, the idea of using imagemagick to make one of these on the fly comes to mind... I'll have to look into how we could implement it, but that may be overkill unless the freaking bots start running hashes against the files (not likely, but possible).
No offense but please look into imagemagic and whatever else AFTER a solution that allows disabling admin approval is in place. Just use SOMETHING in addition to the SMF's default captcha, allowing you to disable admin approval in registrations. This admin approval stupidity has been going on for way too long already.
I was just going to use lines from FS2 missions and ask for the 3rd, 4th or 5th word.
And how do you suppose people unfamiliar with FS2 and possibly not well versed in english are supposed to figure out correct answer?
Come on, just go with random words and numbers. Like "notify 09644 unread", "approval print 28303" and "93632 check cancel".
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I mean that rather than random words in the scroller, we use FS2 quotes. If spambots are capable of recognising the 3rd word in a quote from a 12 year old game then we should just give up modding and get them to do it. :p
Plus picking the 3rd word in the sentence requires a skill level much closer to human skills than typing out the whole thing.
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Oh yeah I remember that gif idea, I didn't know it was actually being seriously considered. Unfortunately, Photoshop CS whatever doesn't come with imageready anymore, so I couldn't help with that, you would have to figure something else out, like one of those online generators.
Unless anyone can make flashes, or turn .anis into .gifs, or could provide prepared images to somebody who would have a method of creating .gifs (mjn.maxael probably would).
And I realize it's a bit past the image captcha stage, and I might have actually seen this here, but check this out:
(http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/6034/13359225599086021341543.png)
(via http://strix.org.uk/ransom)
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I mean that rather than random words in the scroller, we use FS2 quotes. If spambots are capable of recognising the 3rd word in a quote from a 12 year old game then we should just give up modding and get them to do it. :p
Plus picking the 3rd word in the sentence requires a skill level much closer to human skills than typing out the whole thing.
Fair enough, as long as we can get rid of the admin approval already. And lower complexity of the standard SMF captcha a notch, the current one is hard to read and it still doesn't do anything to counter bots.
In addition, I would keep captcha enabled for posts and private messages for accounts with less than 1 post. Meaning captcha is required if you haven't posted even once yet. So even if an actual human registers a bot, the account can't be given over to a bot right away.
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Okay, Admin authorization is turned off and the new animgif system is in place. Let's see how that works.
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buy v1@gr@
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Hmm, seems LordPomposity's account has been haxx0red. Time to ban him.
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buy v1@gr@
Finally! Where do I sign up?