Spammers and chat down

[cteno4]

Hey we may have a spat of spam here, the forum certificate pooped out again and thus chat and the spammer filter are down until martijn can kick it again here. He is in route to Japan around now so hopefully he can get to it soon here remotely.

 

So please have patience here and if spams pop up just send in a report (adding a post does not help) and we will keep zapping them.

 

Martijn has been testing the new update to the forum software with our database to make sure everything is working well before moving the live forum over to it. Unfortunately his long long awaited japan vacation and a new job has intervened so it will be a bit before we have that and hopefully this issue will get fixed for good. Spammers will always find a way to get in, but at least the automated filters keep a lot at bay.

 

Thanks for having patience with this!

 

Jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

License key is back in place, so that should keep spammers out until the next time the key poofs again.

 

I'll be out quite a lot the coming day, but early morning and late evening I usually check the forum quickly. And Jeff will send me an email as well if the key poofs again, so it should get fixed fairly quickly.

[Das Steinkopf]

So much for your no adult content someone has spammed a heap of porn links on the archive page under the thinking of building an around the room shelf layout.

[cteno4]

We have been having issues with the license key that turns off the spam filter and we get little wave. This should be taken care of soon when the forum software is updated.

 

Instead of remarks in a post, please use the report system to report spam like this as it's the clearest and fastest way to alert admin to the spam.

 

Thanks

 

Jeff

[velotrain]

How about moderating the first X messages from new members - many groups do this.

[cteno4]

We may go to that for now. It can be hard on newbies at times.

 

Jeff

[velotrain]

Well - you didn't like my M-P topic because of your alleged concern for innocent eyes seeing an image showing more epidermis than you thought appropriate.

 

Isn't keeping the forum "clean" a much higher priority than newbies anxiously waiting to see their first post on the forum? 

 

Just communicate the possible delay up front and explain the reason - I'm sure they'll understand.

 

There was recently a video on the forum that was many magnitudes more offensive than anything I ever posted.

[Pashina12]

"The chat room has not been properly setup by the administrator (the chat room account number has not been supplied)."

 

?

[miyakoji]

"The chat room has not been properly setup by the administrator (the chat room account number has not been supplied)."

 

?

 

It's got to do with the certificate cteno4 mentions in the top post.  Also on the main forum page you can see a list of users currently online.  There are several with random looking names and they're in validating status, they're all spammers, they just haven't spammed yet :)

[Pashina12]

It's got to do with the certificate cteno4 mentions in the top post.  Also on the main forum page you can see a list of users currently online.  There are several with random looking names and they're in validating status, they're all spammers, they just haven't spammed yet :)

 

Ahhh, okay. Hmmm. Yeah you might be right, those Pashina12 and miyakoji ones look pretty dodgy... ;)

[cteno4]

It's something funky with the older version of the forum software we are running where it drops the license key/certificate now and then and that takes chat and the spam signup filter off line...

 

Martijn is working on doing a full offline test of the newest forum software of out db to make sure all will be good when we upgrade. He's been very busy of late but is chipping away at it.

 

Jeff

[miyakoji]

I just reported some more spam, with animation.  If someone were to click on that at work, it would be a big problem, and that would be very unfortunate.  Honestly all those accounts should be deleted.  They're just sitting there waiting to spam.

[velotrain]

Strange that the moderators seem more concerned at having train-related photographs than porn on the forum.

[bill937ca]

I just reported some more spam, with animation.  If someone were to click on that at work, it would be a big problem, and that would be very unfortunate.  Honestly all those accounts should be deleted.  They're just sitting there waiting to spam.

 New accounts should be on moderated status until the first post is approved.

[miyakoji]

 New accounts should be on moderated status until the first post is approved.

Agreed, but in the case of all those accounts from the last few several weeks with randomly generated names, they should just be bulk deleted.  Plus if they were registered from the same IP or IP range, they can be further narrowed down and deleted without clobbering legit accounts.

[bill937ca]

More porn.  I think its time to wind down JNS.

[miyakoji]

I think its time to wind down JNS.

 

Well I wouldn't go that far .  Just some adminstrative tasks and some measures to prevent this kind of thing, like moderating users until they're proven legit, as you said.

[velotrain]

Until the past few days they were content replying to existing topics.

 

Now they feel free to start a new thread with the word "porn" in the subject.

 

Doesn't the software have the ability to scan topic names and reject/delete any that are objectionable?

[HantuBlauLOL]

just a suggestion.. how about new account's first post/thread needs admin's approval?

[cteno4]

We are hoping to load the new software update that should eliminate most all of this issue. We have had some squirrelly things with a few folks permissions in the current software lately (not being able to post when their permissions said they should be able to) so we do t want to mess with that until the update is installed.

 

Please report and we will zap asap.

 

Jeff

[adrianKeith]

If the chat room doesn't work out, would anyone mind if I fired up a Discord server for JNSForum? There's a web-client and a downloadable client as well and the server is completely free to create. No max users (that I'm aware of) and you would weed out any and all spam accounts. These forum chat rooms tend to be easy to infiltrate from my previous experience with other boards.

 

The web-client for Discord would ensure that users wouldn't have to download anything if they're not comfortable. 

 

https://discordapp.com/

 

The features list:

https://discordapp.com/features

[cteno4]

Adrian,

 

As soon as the new forum software is up Martijn will be looking at the options to adding chat back into the forum software. they just stopped supporting the integrated ones but it looks like others can get integrated in but needs to be researched a bit. we would like to see if we could make the membership use the forum membership so we would not be having to deal with spam filtering on two systems. Hopefully new forum software will be running very soon here.

 

jeff

[adrianKeith]

Sounds good. I'll wait to see how the new chat works out, hopefully well!