We’ve had to impose a few rules for new members in an effort to reduce spam on the forum since we’ve been seeing a lot of bots defeat the human verification systems. Certain actions such as posting links, sending emails, leaving visitor messages, etc, will not be possible until a member has made 3 posts of their own. We hope that this measure will help somewhat in curbing the flood of spam that has been appearing recently and that it will not significantly inconvenience any legitimate members.
Oh btw, I haven’t tested this yet, so let me know if it actually works.
I would increase the limit by a bit, maybe make it 10 posts, I have seen a few bots that spam a few forums, and some bots are getting more and more advance, even posting human like replies, unfortunately bots are a major problem that all forums suffer from. its a constant war and it seems that the spammers do have the edge at times:cry:
damn those bots to the depths of Tartarus!
Unfortunately they find their way to every forum sooner or later and once you get one or two they keep coming back.
Homepage links are permanently disabled. I can try to add it to the system where they become enabled by posting but I guess I just don’t see a lot of reason to have this. I mean, how many people use this, let alone actually follow another members homepage link?
[post=35386]These two zero-post members[/post] were able to add spam links to their signature … is this supposed to be disabled now? Then it does not work.
Ah, they seem to be creating links in their profile “about me” section. The hack I installed only prevents them from posting the links. This is fairly infuriating…
At least in this case, no one is going to see the links unless they visit the spambot’s profile.
I’ll look into this in the future but I can’t spend more time on this right now as other things need doing.
Regarding the whole Homepage section in member profiles, I’ve never come across a legitimate Homepage link in all the TQ.net profiles I’ve searched in the past several months (all have been links to websites used to sell stuff). In fact, it’s one of the key Red Flags I search for when looking for spambots. So I don’t see a point in having a Homepage section at all, really, on these Grim Dawn boards or on the TQ boards. The Homepage & Signature sections are by far the most abused sections of profiles where advertisements are placed, in my experience. Of course, there’s also a lot of dead-giveaways in the member names spammers choose, too, but that’s an entirely different topic.
I don’t think you should get rid of the homepage just bc some people abuse it with bots or other stuff.
also I would say ten post is better then three. someone that wants to be and is active should have no problem finding ten threads they are interested in enough to make a post. thx
