shoes888 must DIE!

BoxheadTim wrote:

mndsm wrote: We do the 2nd on the forum I own too. But we also run userid's for admin approval via IP. If it's an obvious one IE buy \/1agra cheap or something, gone. if the IP comes up outside the US, gone (we're an MN based board, not russian.) worked well so far, we haven't had one get past the front line in almost 3 years.

One issue with IP-based blocking is that one bad egg can affect a whole lot of legit users if they're using the same provider. There's at least one large ISP with initials similar to Alabama Off Line that used to route all their traffic via a handful of externally visible proxies. They might have changed that recently but I somehow doubt that.

We don't IP block based on demo as a rule, it's more of i've learned that if they're from certain places, chances are they aren't legit. Helps that 90% of what we see if verified spam IP's out of the box.

DoctorBlade wrote:

Tom Heath wrote:

Javelin wrote: Can I offer a suggestion? Make the registration form have a picture of a Miata with a question of "What car is this?". If they can't answer we don't want them anyways.

You're very close to the answer we're looking at, though it might cycle between a few options to prevent them from writing a script.

I'd like to point out I'm not an expert on obscure Italian cars.

Nah, keep it easy. Have choices A-D and use 1 of 4 pictures (so each lines up with a choice). Say Miata, Mustang, 911, & Elise as the 4. Anybody should be able to get that.

A few thoughts:

1. captchas suck balls and don't work. There are things that can be done with existing registration that help tremendously and are no hassle for real people. PM me if you want some details. I ain't giving out my anti-spam tricks publicly.

2. "all new users' first posts go to a moderation queue for approval" This would actually be pretty easy: Something like:
   If user.post_count == 0:
   post.approved = False

Would get close. For good measure, you could have it send you an email letting you know you've got a newb to check out, and give them a message explaining why their post hasn't shown up.

It's a pretty good idea, and would not be difficult to implement IF one of the peeps knows python.

2) "Another nice tool is being able to "Delete post as spam" which automatically deletes all posts by the user in question and bans him in 1 easy click."

You have this, actually. I can't remember where it is, but there's a "KILL" button that wipes out the user and everything they've ever done. For obvious reasons, such a powerful tool is not someplace anyone could click it on accident.

I vote for the "Miata picture" idea. Seems reasonable, and no bot will be able to figure it out.

My dentist's office uses a neat thing instead of Captcha... you have to move the slider on a bar to a specific randomly generated point. A lot easier than trying to decipher letters on messy background, but requires mouse input.

See: http://www.smilesdental.com/Contact-Us/Appointment-Request/

Seems like a job for some nifty software. Needs to be called "Skynet".

PLEASE NOT CAPTCHA!! Use another system of the same type. Captcha uses weird twisted and shadowed type that I have to go thru 10-30 refreshes to find a series of letters that I can read ALL of them.

Several of the forums I'm on just quit using Captcha because they required it on every post and no one could consistently captcha all the letters displayed and posting became an exercise in futility.