Dragnix.Net

For crying out loud... I figured it was spam when I went to report it, but I thought there'd just be a link... not the actual photos.

This is exactly why there should be several moderators. Something like this cannot be left up on the site for any length of time.

Couple this with the spam from "apqr251" and we've got a problem.

Tempest, I think Falconer has a point. We need more moderators.

I wasn't sure if the captcha has been defeated or not, but since 11 spambots has been deleted in the last two months (compared to the usual one or two a year), I will assume that someone somewhere (hi China!) has updated their inadequate OCR script. This was to be expected considering that the revert color trick was more something I used to test bots abilities than anything else.

So far their spamming has remained light and sporadic and we are lucky that they are so well behaved (i.e. they don't register and post every 120 second until banned). Also, I'm not against the idea to have more moderators to manage the board activity and moderate debates amongst users but having moderators to fight against automated tireless scripts? I don't think it's the right approach to solve this particular problem.

But it's not like I don't have any more tricks up my sleeves (ex: the captcha on the gallery). The captcha I have in mind for the board is quite... unique.

I could get a friend of mine to design a bot to attempt to access the Forums and post, if you want to test this new fail-safe. Or you can just let it do it's work and let that speak for itself.

And I volunteer for mod duties if your willing to give them. I'm on a lot recently, so I can catch things pretty easily.

Okay, I can already tell you the concept because the people at phpBB are planning to change how the captcha works; meaning that I will have to wait to see the next version if I don't want to re-write the whole thing once they release the new version in a month or two.

Instead of a typical alphabet (a, b, c, etc.), there will be a special font with letters that make no sense but there will be a translation sheet displayed on the registration page.

So the captcha will look like this:
♪ ☼ ↕ ▲

And a picture on the registration page will show that
♪ = A
☼ = B
↕ = C
• = D
▲ = E
☼ =F
etc...

Recognizing characters will be easy but this alone will be useless because a bot would also need to translate the code. A more insidious way to apply this concept is to scramble a normal alphabet (ie A = Z, B = Y, C = X, etc..). This way the bot always identify the character correctly, but never enter the right code.

Sounds fun. I'd love to see someone design something to get past that little dandy. That would be a sight worth any amount of $$.

I'll volunteer for mod duties. And I like the idea of incorporating cryptography into the filters.

I agree with them on that Tempy, we've had the same mods for years, and lets face it, they prolly won't be coming back just to do that job. Heck, the only real mods we have right now are vampirehunter and you, and sadly it seems that even vampirehunter's post are starting to slowly dwindle away.

I say you debunk those people that are heads over the threads, and never show and grant that power to the people who actually get on, and are practically begging for the position.

i think I've suggested this before, the last time this happened. It's just a thought really. Please don't yell at me just feeling a bit ignored.

it;s something to concider at any rate.

Perhaps you could use the Local Moderators group you created? Two moderators to the more spammed forums, one to the less spammed ones?

Once registered a spammer can post anywhere. Their bots may be programmed to avoid "test" and "moderators" forums but otherwise, I doubt they truly care about the forum title; meaning that their spamming is probably more random than focused on a specific forum.

Moreover, a local moderator wouldn't have the proper tools to fight a spambot. A local mod would be able to delete a post but the bot could simply post 10 more. As I said in an earlier post, the spambots we have around here are rather well behaved, but expecting your opponent to always fight with one hand tied behind its back is unwise. To stop them, you either need to ban them (require Global Mod status) or delete them (require Admin status).

Lastly, there are better solutions that are a lot less frustrating than having mods battling spambots. Assuming that the captcha fail... badly. The simplest solution would be to create a new group of Administrator saddled with the task of activating new accounts (spambot usually have xxxx123 or number-only name pattern, so it's easy to spot them even when they have no post).

I see. So how would a person become part of this back up plan? Are there a set of requirments?

i'm not saying we need mods to tackle this prob, but more as something that would be a good idea to do more or less. Sure we haven't had a big need for mods in a while, but with everyone coming back slowly we're sure to be seeing more real people flow though here. I'm sorry for the confusion.

@Kojack: There was no spammer activity in the last 10 days so we haven't reached the point where a new group need to be created.