Just a quick suggestion on the forums, and a way to combat spam. We a similar problem with a forum we were running on our company site, and ended up having to spend every morning clearing out porn and crap.

Make the registration process require acceptance from a mod.

Just a thought

Let's not be too hasty, they link to some pretty good web pages

yeah, i keep debating whether to turn that on or not. what stops me is that, as a user, i hate waiting to be approved by the moderators.

though if the spam does offend you guys, then i most certainly will.

It is irritating for users of the forum to have the latest replies to topics all buried under SPAM that most people are not remotely interested in / and would be unwise of them to even open.

However , I can live with it at the moment , as the admin does a great job of regularly cleaning it out

All the Best .......Blade

PS ......I would not be averse to the Forum checking me for the installed Module if that is what is required to rid ourselves of these pests.

it doesn't offend me, as I don't bother reading it

I just feel for the mods having to constantly clean up the forum, so thought I'd say something, that's all.

I'm sure you will decide on the right course of action, as usual

Sounds like there are some old players that may want to come back and with having it blocked here on the forum and have to wait for approval should we just do away with that again?

I can go back and log on the forum more often to keep the spam cleared up as much as possible. Easier I think than having to go through and read all the mail of people wanting to join.

What say ye?

yeah, i used to read through all the new user requests, but i started getting like 30 spam accounts a day so i just stopped.

which virtually made it impossible to obtain an account on the forum. *sigh*


i'll remove the user activation thingy and we'll try to just deal with it again.

Didnt take long for the spam to start appearing again.

yeah, but we got a new player registered that we wouldn't have had before.

Who is our new member? I would like to welcome them if I see them in game.

Bitoupletup posted here a few days ago - said he's been following the forums and just assumed he played, too.

is there any way we can get one of those things that proves that its a human being applying for an account?

we already do the captcha and they have to receive an email to click on the activation link.

i don't know what else to do. i would be happy to turn admin activation back on and then nominate somebody to manually cull through the 50 or so requests a day looking for the real ones.

or we can go back to not allowing new users :/

My current thoughts on this problem is to let people Login to the game and get to know the players first before "arranging" to admit them to the forums. I have helped new players in the past, once they have shown some serious intent by quietly getting on with the game / or maybe sending tells asking how / where to start etc. I am averse to handing out gold etc to the sort of new player that "quits before they start".

All the Best .........Blade

PS I understand that it may be challenging at first for potential new players to set up their computers to play Dalakora, so my advice is to make the neccessary info highly visable on the forums. I personally prefer not to have the forums open to SPAM all the time

I suggest a couple of additional fields that must be filled in and gets checked at registration stage - captcha can be beaten by some scripts or by mechanical turks so if you had a couple of questions for example like :

What game is Dalakora a mod for? [ ]

What is *random number* (+ / - ) *random number* [ ]

That way the registrant needs to know at least what this forum is about and the randomly generated simple maths question will require a person to do it. The answer can be submitted with the form in a hidden field and encrypted so a parser cant lift the answer to paste in.

This will alleivate it some - it depends on how far these spammers are prepared to go... the other thing is to empower more Moderators so all known trusted members can just delete a spam message whenever they see one.

Happy new year Preachman. Its been a long time. Glad to see you drop in. Hope the family is doing well.

no, i'm done with it. i'm going back to user accounts being approved by admins. and if anybody wants to volunteer having the account requests mailed to them, by all means speak up.

i'll either put a message in the welcome section here or a note in the game saying to specifically mail dalakora@gmail.com asking to be approved so that they don't get lost in the noise.

don't blame you - I ended up doing the exact same thing on the original Dalakora forums, the hassle far outweighed the new signup rate.

Just a thought though... have a user validate their Forum account in-game. Allow players to enter their email address to a listener in game which will spit out the email address to log file which can be picked up by a script that updates the forum database

You can even set a threshold then, that they will only automatically get validated if they have a character above a certain level etc.

This way you Know for sure that it is a player on the server joining the forum. How many spammers are going to buy NWN and all modules, install CEP, create a character etc etc etc

A happy new year to you too !

Family is doing well - we have had another new addition to the family. My wife gave birth to a baby boy last July so now I am a proud father of 2 boisterous and very active boys !

All the best to you and your family too !

All the spam might be coming from Bioware employees for all we know

Well congrats on the second addition Preach. My little guy whom you met when we were in the UK has grown to be a real pain (or teenager as some call it). I cant wait for him to get older and become normal again.

Haha - know the feeling. My 3 year old is already behaving like a teenager. By the time he is in his teens he will probably have me in the pit fighting lions to entertain him.

at least it's not CHUN

Hi Preacher

Glad to hear all is well with your family and now have two boys.

Regards

Simon