What's with this forum board ?

As long as we don't go Vertical Scope, I'm ok.  That platform is KILLING so many forums - Pirate 4x4 (so much that they broke off and stared Irate 4x4), Hotrodders Bulletin Board.  HRBB lost nearly 1/4 of their members - a shocking percentage of which were long-time members with lots of respect and ended up getting the ban stick because they turned into complete arses.

It's an interesting phenomenon.  Forums who switched to Vertical Scope platforms are experiencing far more online bullying, and I've heard rumblings that the Gubmint is investigating.  Something about the platform is actually making people angry.

I don't want that happening here.  I love you folks.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I'm not advocating any forum software whatsoever. I am not even advocating any change in GRM. 
 

I was ONLY responding to your "Conformity breeds mediocrity" comment. Unique for the sake of unique is not necessarily a noble goal. Sometimes it's just rebelliousness. 
 

I think it is fair to say there are things on this site that do not always work well. But I am content with letting GRM make those decisions without criticism. 

One idea to keep the multi-page canoe flotillas under control automatically - have a topic creation limiter that causes new accounts to self-nuke if they create more than 10 topics in a 1-hour span for example. I'd be surprised if any real user on here even makes 10 new topics per week.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

You haven't seen me on a good whiskey night.

In reply to Stampie :

For the last time, I'M NOT SENDING YOU MY CREDIT CARD INFO FOR PASSPORTS FROM NEW DELHI. Stop asking.

SV reX said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I was ONLY responding to your "Conformity breeds mediocrity" comment. Unique for the sake of unique is not necessarily a noble goal. Sometimes it's just rebelliousness. 

Actually, from a software perspective, conformity increases the attack surface. That's why people go after Windows or MacOS with ransomware, not the dude in the basement still running an Amiga.

Yes, some of this is "security by obscurity", which is also a problem, but given the relentless automatic attacks against common software - for example, the logs on the server that hosts my blogs are full of attempted attacks against WordPress, even though I'm not running a blog CMS - it's almost a toss up between having someone on hand who can patch the system as soon as there are security fixes available, or having someone develop a system that is tailored to one's specific use case.

Appleseed said:

In reply to Stampie :

For the last time, I'M NOT SENDING YOU MY CREDIT CARD INFO FOR PASSPORTS FROM NEW DELHI. Stop asking.

What about your debit card info then?

Appleseed said:

In reply to Stampie :

For the last time, I'M NOT SENDING YOU MY CREDIT CARD INFO FOR PASSPORTS FROM NEW DELHI. Stop asking.

Amazon gift cards will suffice. 

sleepyhead the buffalo said:

John Welsh said:

So, that then goes to the question that I have been wondering...
Do we have any members who also live on the other side of the clock who could be trusted with some limited responsibility?   

an alternative would be to have someone in the Pacific Time zone, who 'frequently' stays up until ~midnight local (which is 4am east coast; so there'd only be a 2-3hour gap).

That's me. I saw the barrage as it was occuring, but couldn't do anything.

Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:

This would be a good opportunity to update our instructions on how to report the spam. I'm aware that we should not reply in those threads (the old "canoe" hack), and of course don't open any links. 

What I'm currently doing is copying the user name and posting that to the canoe thread.

I second this request. Had no idea that I shouldn't reply and use the word canoe... I thought that was the keyword to mark them. 

In reply to OHSCrifle & Floating Doc :

The history of "canoe" comes from a previous version of the GRM board where a codeword search for the word "canoe" was used as a way to flush out spam posts.  That system didn't really continue to the current version of the board.  This current version of GRM has been around since 2008 or now about 13 years. So, its been about a 15+ year running gag to use the word "canoe."  Its okay to continue with the gag but now its just that, a gag. 

If you see something and you want to say something, there is a sticky post at the top of the Off-Topic section for Mod Help.  Feel free to post in there and it will get addressed.  

bgkast said:

sleepyhead the buffalo said:

John Welsh said:

So, that then goes to the question that I have been wondering...
Do we have any members who also live on the other side of the clock who could be trusted with some limited responsibility?   

an alternative would be to have someone in the Pacific Time zone, who 'frequently' stays up until ~midnight local (which is 4am east coast; so there'd only be a 2-3hour gap).

That's me. I saw the barrage as it was occuring, but couldn't do anything.

bgkast, thanks for chiming in but...

As of earlier today, we have deputized another gun slinger in the fight against spam-bots.  That duty and privilege has been accepted by Washington State's own, Javelin.  I'm sure you recognize his name.  He is, after all, the 20th placer on the GRM leader board; a dork of the highest order.  

John Welsh said:

bgkast said:

sleepyhead the buffalo said:

John Welsh said:

So, that then goes to the question that I have been wondering...
Do we have any members who also live on the other side of the clock who could be trusted with some limited responsibility?   

an alternative would be to have someone in the Pacific Time zone, who 'frequently' stays up until ~midnight local (which is 4am east coast; so there'd only be a 2-3hour gap).

That's me. I saw the barrage as it was occuring, but couldn't do anything.

bgkast, thanks for chiming in but...

As of earlier today, we have deputized another gun slinger in the fight against spam-bots.  That duty and privilege has been accepted by Washington State's own, Javelin.  I'm sure you recognize his name.  He is, after all, the 20th placer on the GRM leader board; a dork of the highest order.  

I humbly accept the nuclear football and promise to only use it on spam bots. I have the West Coast watch.

John Welsh said:

If you see something and you want to say something, there is a sticky post at the top of the Off-Topic section for Mod Help.  Feel free to post in there and it will get addressed.  

 

Wouldn't it be easier to have a "report this post" button?

Javelin, if you could also fix the search and other weird issues unique to this forum, that would be great :)

In reply to ProDarwin :

I have the programming ability of a potato unless the forum is run on AutoCad R14 software.

Keith Tanner said:

I'm just going to say that outsiders have little idea how heavy and unrelenting the attacks are on public websites. GRM gets the occasional leaker that's a bit annoying, but it's low consequence and they're doing pretty well if it's so infrequent. 

Indeed.  And one of the downsides of using a common forum software is that once an exploit is found, everyone using that is vulnerable.

I recall a period where a forum I helped admin was getting regular spam attacks (like two-three times a day) from people who were not even registering accounts.  They were able to force new accounts into the forum through a back door.  That was the final straw where I decided to ban three certain top level domains from access.  Spam posts dropped by orders of magnitude after that.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Yes, that's true. Once an exploit is found in common software, everyone is vulnerable. 
 

It's also true that once a fix is found, everyone benefits. When common software is exploited, there is great incentive for robust fixes to be found quickly, and it's often done for free by some of the best programmers on the planet. 
 

I have a small WordPress site which crashed recently wrapped up in a spam attack that affected over a million sites. I wrote a few emails, but that's all I did. The powers that be fixed everything, and provided the new security measures and apps to deal with it ongoing. I didn't pay a penny. 
 

The same thing that makes common software vulnerable also makes it valuable. 

Shoot, I've been using the 'canoe' keyword to mark spam posts for eternity. Guess I need to get with the program.

I just did it twice this morning in the Motorcycle forum.