FLIGHT

I've only just joined, but are there any moderators in this forum? I've perused through the previous posts and think that this forum could be enhanced greatly by the lessening of spam and relocated off-topic discussions. Thoughts? Anyone?

Moved this to the Flight section. Thanks for the post. Spam does eventually get removed, albeit not as soon as I'd like, which is why I made a thread asking users to PM me or to report it as soon as they see it, which will help getting rid of it sooner. If you see a spam thread, let me know, and I'll take care of it.

As for off-topicness, this forum is a bit relaxed when it comes to the rules. So long as you're not spamming, or being an all-round jerk, things are pretty open around here for new people.

I think Zanderman was referring to the state of the board this morning. It was completely plastered with spam threads. The fact is, I have to remove every spammer one by one, and I only have time to do it about once a week. We get about 1 new spambot registering on to the forums every 20 minutes or so. I can zap a bunch of them at a time so long as they haven't posted yet (I just prune the users that haven't posted). I have it set so that admins have to approve anyone new coming on to the forums now, so we'll see how that works out.

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Was it now? I've seen that happen quite a few times already. It's frustrating for sure when it does happen. The registration authorization is a good idea. Now that I think about it, another possible solution could be what some forums are starting to do and that is to require registration not only being approved by an admin, but also requiring that the user use an email address which isn't a free email address (gmail, hotmail, etc). I personally, am not a fan of it, since all of my emails are free based, but it is an option for future registrants.

I'm getting quite a few registration requests, and while some are quite obvious in what they are (cheap boats for sale), some aren't as cut-and-dry. How are you able to tell?

Yeah, I think I just logged on in the interim between spam sweeps. I think this site is a great resource and unfortunately when you see the forum wrecked with spam it makes you less prone to frequent and participate in the board.

Unfortunately Stick, I feel like most people, like yourself, go the free email route and the board would be losing a bunch of potentially active posters that way. As for weeding out registrations, be cautious of dodgit.com accounts. This site is created specifically access emails sent to a fake account by any name of your choosing where you can access them quick and password-free.

Also, not being familiar with what you guys are capable of doing, is there anyway to filter out certain URLs from being linked to? I'm sure you guys get ads for certain sites on a pretty regular basis and may start to slowly help the issue.

Or, perhaps if you only allow people to post threads if they contribute a certain amount of posts, just to limit the amount of clutter.

Checking out here may also help:
http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/modif ... ecurity-5/

I'm guessing by the sudden influx of spam threads on here, and the lack of new e-mails in my inbox mean that the authorization for activation has been lifted. lol