Hard Light Productions Forums
Site Management => Site Support / Feedback => Topic started by: JGZinv on March 16, 2013, 09:42:35 pm
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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)
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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.
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Added. Password sent to his email address.
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Thank ya kindly.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Apparently, a certain chess forum has resorted to a chess puzzle CAPTCHA (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/14/chess_based_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.
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Apparently, a certain chess forum has resorted to a chess puzzle CAPTCHA (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/14/chess_based_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.
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how about something like.
Is this a GTF Perseus?
(http://www.mediafire.com/conv/86654d3e8c2113047d0d534ef5eeeaba9cbcff31d79e636cbba0886c0ff683cc6g.jpg)
If you do not know click this link to see some images (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTF_Perseus)
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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Why people would even want to spam this site? Please enlighten me
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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...
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Yeah, ad's
I just wonder why they bother websites relatively small i thought they had bigger sites under their attack
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I think this site got huge with the release of Wing Commander Saga and Diaspora.
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I think this site got huge with the release of Wing Commander Saga and Diaspora.
Definitely not.
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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.
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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?
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Unfortunately, members aren't displayed on the memberlist if they haven't been activated. I've manually activated him.
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Hi, guys, please unban my IP 78.107.238.106, I've tried to register and got blocked... This message was sent from the office :(
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Hmm. That IP doesn't appear on the list of ban triggers -- on HLP anyway. Zacam or rev_posix will need to see if it's on the spam blacklist.
Sorry about the registration difficulty.
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It works! I don't know how, but it works. Thank you!
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I didn't fix it. :nervous:
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Just registered another user who got turned away as spam.
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I'll see what I can tweak in terms of what it flags (or rather, reads back from the flagging list).
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Hi
last message from bloodstalker around Mar 31 2013, 8:30pm
i try to register and i get this :An Error Has Occurred! The user bloodstalker with Email *removed* is a Spam, please contact forum administrator.
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PM Received with *removed* information included, account registered.
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Thank you. :)
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Hi there, got another user having trouble registering:
"The user Luke with Email [email protected] (IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) is a Spam, please contact forum administrator."
He's a guy that made some intersting stuff for Wing Commander Saga, some of which might be useful for the larger FS modding community.
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Hi there, got another user having trouble registering:
"The user Luke with Email [email protected] (IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) is a Spam, please contact forum administrator."
He's a guy that made some intersting stuff for Wing Commander Saga, some of which might be useful for the larger FS modding community.
Unless an Administrator receives a PM with the redacted information in the clear, finding that information in the logging to establish a user account will be tedious.
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Sent you the info via PM.
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Hobbie 6hours 43mins ago says:
Hi, I saw on the Hard Light forums that you're helping a few folks out with registration woes at this thread: Hard-light.net
I'd like to add my name to the list of people who's been having trouble registering. Finding someone, ANYONE to contact has been near-impossible since in order to PM an admin, you have to be registered, and to register you have to PM an admin and so on and so forth...
The error is as follows: The user Hobbie with Email [...] is a Spam, please contact forum administrator.
If you could forward this to the admins to get that checked out, that would be great. Thanks
Regards,
Hobbie
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People need to lrn2IRC.
Maybe someone should put a sticky on the Getting Started board saying that if you can't register, ask for help on IRC.
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How many non-geeks in this day and age actually know what IRC is? :p
In any case, I think my point about too many false positives is proving more and more salient.
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How many non-geeks in this day and age actually know what IRC is? :p
Hence a sticky in the Getting Started board, with mibbit links. Isn't that exactly the kind of thing the Getting Started forum was made for ?
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Well, someone write up a how-to and I'll sticky it. :)
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Isn't that exactly the kind of thing the Getting Started forum was made for ?
No. The Getting Started forum was not made to get around stupid forum bugs.
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I wouldn't classify this as a bug. It's a false positive, which is the sort of thing you have to expect with any automatic decision system. You can minimize them, but you can't eliminate them. Showing new registrants how to inform the admins is something that falls under the Getting Started umbrella.
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Wouldn't it be better to implement something that's much more immediately visible, though? Here's a thought: create an e-mail account accessible by all the admins, and post a message on the registration page, to the effect of, "If your registration attempt is rejected as spam, please send an e-mail to the staff, and your account can be activated manually."
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Are supposed spambots informed of their rejection via some kind of automated email? If so, a link to a mibbit client in there might be more effective than a getting started sticky even.
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Isn't that exactly the kind of thing the Getting Started forum was made for ?
No. The Getting Started forum was not made to get around stupid forum bugs.
But the thing is that we know there are quite a few false positives, helping people out who were hit by them would be the nice thing to do, would it not?
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Oh I agree. But a solution at the source of the problem is better than one which might not be immediately obvious to a new user.
On that note, do we actually know that the spam system is actually keeping spammers at bay? It was put in before our current CAPITCHA system IIRC.
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The warning message is being sent by the Stop Forum Spam (http://www.stopforumspam.com/) plugin which Zacam applied. It's based on community-reported blacklists, but every once in a while it snags someone innocent, so Zacam will go in and add an exception.
And yes, it most certainly is keeping spammers at bay. Before it was installed, Zacam and I were fighting off over twenty bot registrations per day.
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And yes, it most certainly is keeping spammers at bay. Before it was installed, Zacam and I were fighting off over two-hundred bot registrations per day.
Fixed that for you to reflect a more accurate count assessment. And dealing with it on a twice daily basis was exhausting.
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Egad! Either my memory is terrible, or I didn't know the tenth of it. :shaking:
And I've transferred MatthTheGeek's write-up to the Getting Started forum.
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Yes but my point was that it was put in before the newer system. Is it still doing that? Is there any way to check?
This (http://www.wcsaga.com/forum/index.php?f=3&t=1000&rb_v=viewtopic) sort of thread is why I'm pissed off about this. We have no idea how big a problem this is because we don't know what percentage of people are getting turned off by false positives and simply not registering.
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Should be fairly trivial to test, wouldn't it? Disable Stop Forum Spam for a while, if forums see influx of spammers, then the new captcha doesn't keep them away. If it does, then I wouldn't bother with Stop Forum Spam. Few spammers is better than few real people turned away.
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Ah, feels nice to be able to make a first post. Thanks to Mobius and everyone else for your help in setting me up. Yeah, for those of us who haven't used IRC since the '90s, it frankly never occurred to me to try that. That new post in Getting Started will be helpful, though.
Should be fairly trivial to test, wouldn't it? Disable Stop Forum Spam for a while, if forums see influx of spammers, then the new captcha doesn't keep them away. If it does, then I wouldn't bother with Stop Forum Spam. Few spammers is better than few real people turned away.
During my registration woes I wasn't aware there was something besides the dual CAPTCHA that would be checking. Is there a possibility that the spam filter is doing blanket-level IP checks and comparing them against a big database somewhere? Admittedly I know nothing about the Stop Forum Spam service so I'm kinda just pitching ideas.
EDIT: It's probably worth pointing out that I tried registering from two entirely different IP addresses and had the same issue both times. Would the domain in the E-mail address flag it?
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I've seen Gmail addresses from New York IPs blocked as spam.
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Had one of these again. Was it ever confirmed whether HLP needs "Stop Forum Spam" after the current multi-frame gif captcha was put in place? Because I think it'd be worth the trouble to try, as HLP really can't afford turning away potential new community contributors.
16:35:08 *** mib_re33yk joined #hard-light [email protected]
16:35:46 <mib_re33yk>: Hi, I'm trying to register for the forum but it keeps giving me an error:
16:36:02 <mib_re33yk>: "The user [username] with Email [email] (IP [IP]) is a Spam, please contact forum administrator."
16:36:09 <mib_re33yk>: username/email/ip removed
16:36:17 <HerraTohtori>: Zacam?
16:36:25 <mib_re33yk>: I'd contact the forum administrator, but I have no idea who that is, and I can't exactly post the problem on the forums
16:36:39 <HerraTohtori>: you're in the right place
16:37:03 <HerraTohtori>: admins of HLP hang around here, if you don't find any here you can try #Freespace
16:37:09 <mib_re33yk>: thanks
16:37:19 <mib_re33yk>: it's past my bedtime already though, I might have to come back tomorrow
16:37:28 <HerraTohtori>: Zacam and Karajorma are admins that hang around in IRC. But sometimes they're AFK
16:37:35 <mib_re33yk>: I've been playing through WiH and apparently my pilot file is corrupted
16:37:43 <HerraTohtori>: ouch
16:37:45 <mib_re33yk>: malloc error which was supposed to have been fixed in a recent build
16:37:49 <HerraTohtori>: how far along were you?
16:37:50 <mib_re33yk>: http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=83354.0
16:37:56 <mib_re33yk>: Just finished Act 1
16:38:03 <mib_re33yk>: not really looking forward to replaying it
16:39:50 *** Darien joined #hard-light [email protected]
16:40:00 *** Darien left #hard-light [email protected]
16:40:55 *** Darien joined #hard-light [email protected]
16:41:32 <Darien>: Thanks HerraTohtori, I'll come back tomorrow and try for an admin
16:41:50 *** mib_re33yk quit (Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client) [email protected]
16:45:09 <HerraTohtori>: Darien: cheers
16:45:20 *** Darien quit (Client Quit) [email protected]
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Had one of these again. Was it ever confirmed whether HLP needs "Stop Forum Spam" after the current multi-frame gif captcha was put in place? Because I think it'd be worth the trouble to try, as HLP really can't afford turning away potential new community contributors.
Well, no. In the strictest sense, HLP can afford to turn away new members (even though obviously we don't want to), but it can't afford to retain a security system that lets through 200 spambots per day.
Zacam is the one to pester if you really want to do a "trial by fire" to see if the multi-frame gif is sufficient -- but I wouldn't be surprised if he's not eager to try it. You left before the spambot registrations really got bad -- I felt as though we were getting utterly flooded with bot registrations, and I only squashed a tenth of the ones that Zacam was handling.
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While I realize that any sort of Honeypot based solution such as StopForumSpam and/or Project HoneyPot API keys have a potential for false positives, especially in the cases of Dynamic IP addresses or ISP domain email addresses, the only thing I can do for controlling that is provision them with false positive information whenever possible, which I do.
And I'm not keen on seeing what sort of flood we would be hit with in terms of temporarily suspending either of those functions. While I do realize the abundant frustration caused by getting caught by a "false" positive, I'd rather lean on making it plainly clear that it can happen and how to get in touch with somebody (and what information to provide) so that we can work through each one as they happen.
The other alternative is what we were doing before, and we were still managing to ban-delete or reject valid registrations in a much higher count than that, including accidentally deleting people that had already managed posting genuine content.
That being said, I'm not the "end all be all" for the Community, so if there is a consensus that want's to have a peek at the world with the walls down, I can make it happen.
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This really speaks for itself.
<Darien> is there an admin around?
<Darien> Zacam?
<Fury`> you may have better luck trying again in, what, 6 hours
<Fury`> karajorma isn't on any channels either
<Fury`> no wait, he is
<Fury`> send message to karajorma, maybe he's in
<Darien> cheers Fury`, but i might just give up on being able to register for the forums
<Darien> managed to fix my pilot file corruption problem anyway
«--- Darien ([email protected]) has Quit (Quit: Darien)
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Yeah, I wasn't in all day. I just noticed this on my IRC logs. If Darien is around I can still make him an account. I just need an email address.
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This really speaks for itself.
Know what else really speaks for itself? The current 43 pages of potential spam registrations accounts that attempted to register in the same time frame that didn't.
I'll revise some wording in some places to let genuine humans know what to do and how to send who what information is needed in order to address this.
***Edit: Registration attempt(s) found, user account created.
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Hi all
Hi there, got another user having trouble registering:
"The user Luke with Email [email protected] (IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) is a Spam, please contact forum administrator."
He's a guy that made some intersting stuff for Wing Commander Saga, some of which might be useful for the larger FS modding community.
After "only" 3 months, now i have my HLP account. ;) Thx to X3N0-Life-Form for the effort and to the admin whoever made it possible now.
Btw, visiting a IRC channel haven't helped me. I asked for help there and post the "The user Luke with Email [email protected] (IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) is a Spam, please contact forum administrator." sentence and the only answer i got was "Stop being a spammer". Very funny, really, but not helpfully. :rolleyes:
Ah and another point: in Germany static IPs are very uncommon. The most private internet users have normally dynamic IPs and have this IP for maximum 24 hours (standard). So a anti-spam system based on IP's is nearly useless with users from germany.
Suggestion: a simple "contact us" feature at the website/forum can help a lot.
One question: there are two anti-spam-functions if i write a new post: captcha and the "word in sentence" feature. Is this now standard at every posting or only until i have x postings?
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It should vanish after a few posts.
Btw, visiting a IRC channel haven't helped me. I asked for help there and post the "The user Luke with Email [email protected] (IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) is a Spam, please contact forum administrator." sentence and the only answer i got was "Stop being a spammer". Very funny, really, but not helpfully. :rolleyes:
On behalf of the chat, I have to apologize. Usually the people there are more helpful than that.
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Hey Luke, good to see you over here. :)
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Glad you made it there :)
:welcome:
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What channel was it.
#hard-light is not the best place to ask for help. #freespace would be.
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It should vanish after a few posts.
Thx. It seems it's gone now.
On behalf of the chat, I have to apologize. Usually the people there are more helpful than that.
It's not your fault and it's history now. ^^
@karajorma and X3N0-Life-Form
Thanks for the welcome. :)
@MatthTheGeek
Sorry, can't remember. And the problem was(is), the last time i used a IRC client very often is several years ago (7 i think), so i am not longer really familiar with IRC.
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(17:51:22) Body: hello there
(17:52:14) Body: i tried registration in hlp forums, but it says sth. with spam account and stuff
(17:52:21) Body: can anyone help me out? :D
(17:52:41) MatthTheGeek: yes
(17:52:51) MatthTheGeek: what email and account name did you try to register with ?
(17:53:22) Body: user: Body, email: [Removed]
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Email Sent.
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Someone might want to obfuscate that email address to prevent it from being picked up by email spambots.
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Got another one, username Squelch, that came to us in #hard-light in his hour of distress after being blocked by an overzealous anti-spam feature. Surely someone can give him a helping hand in these dark times.
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Thanks for the help, I'm sorted now.
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(17:34:39) Gray: i can't register at hard-light
(17:35:27) Gray: i get this message: The user Gray with Email xxx@xxx ... is a Spam, please contact forum administrator.
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PM me his email and desired username (Gray, I assume) and I'll create the account manually.
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After "only" 3 months, now i have my HLP account. ;) Thx to X3N0-Life-Form for the effort and to the admin whoever made it possible now.
Btw, visiting a IRC channel haven't helped me. I asked for help there and post the "The user Luke with Email [email protected] (IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) is a Spam, please contact forum administrator." sentence and the only answer i got was "Stop being a spammer". Very funny, really, but not helpfully. :rolleyes:
1stly, my apologies on that amount of time. I should be implementing some changes shortly that will help out against that in the future.
2ndly, if you are who I think you are according to my IRC Logs, I caught a hold of that situation just after you left the channel. And then subsequently banned the very unhelpful individual that gave that response as it was inappropriate.
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That incident was 2 years ago. I think we can safely move on.
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Or not, since it turns out it wasn't him after all but a much more recent occurrence.
But, whatever.
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Someone on reddit has trouble registering: https://www.reddit.com/r/freespace/comments/3t9pgs/trouble_with_registering_on_hard_light/
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I've created the account manually. He should now have activation instructions in his email.
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(00:18:22) mib_79yrwh [Mibbit@<removed>] entered the room.
(00:18:38) mib_79yrwh: contact administrator???
(00:18:48) mib_79yrwh: email is spam
(00:19:51) mib_79yrwh: can some help me..tried to register and email is a spam?????HELP
(00:21:35) ***MatthTheGeek summons Zacam
(00:21:54) MatthTheGeek: mib_79yrwh: what's the username you tried to register with
(00:22:13) mib_79yrwh: Micarue and email is <Removed>
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Can you PM me the email address? I don't see Micarue on the list of registration attempts.
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Sent.
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Okay, it looks like someone already activated Micarue without saying so. He ought to be able to log in without any problems. If he doesn't know his password, I can reset it and re-send it.
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Someone on Steam is asking for help getting registered on HLP. Not sure how to help him...
http://steamcommunity.com/app/273620/discussions/0/371918937276522416/
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Tell him to get on the HLP IRC.
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He went on IRC but no admin was available. He tried to register with username iainhallam
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Ok, I've created the account for him. He should see an activation notice in his email.
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Another one today that seems to have tried to register as Valeria.
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Account manually created. He should see an activation notice in his email.