My new job!

[Mitera Nikkou]

Since I've got no life, and I've been up and at MSF during all of this new spam, I decided to find them all and make silly reports. Because I can.

Either way, it looks like we may have to go back to admin-accepted registrations, again. Not that many new people are registering these days, anyway. It'd be a great filter to prevent registered spam accounts.

[Kyunji]

Why not just upgrade the site's anti-bot security instead of resorting to manual registration? I'm sure phpBB gives the option to use different "humanity tests." If it doesn't, it'd better upgrade soon or it'll start losing business fast. And while whoever it is that runs this board now is upgrading security, why not remove those unused forums like "Across the Water"... and make a non-default skin for the board... and set up a real web site for these forums... But that's not likely to happen.

My person gripes aside, I think admin-monitored registration is the last thing this site needs at such a stagnant point in its history. Making registration any clunkier than it already is might further reduce the already-small trickle of new users. Surely there's some way to upgrade security without taking such a drastic step.

[Xia]

you know, I don't even remember if I saw the reports before I deleted the users :o

alot of them are coming from the very similar IPs, so I'm about the ban a whole segment of the internet.

Kyunji: Yeah, not likely to happen, we don't actually like doing anything. But to your questions/requests

Visual confirmation is enabled, but its already been busted by bot makers. almost all of the best ones have been busted. I can look around for different phpbb mods for registration, but I pretty much know the answer. phpbb and almost all forum software I've ever used and know about suffers from this problem (and phpbb still hasn't lost business, still gaining actually). In fact, almost every place that has anti-bot stuff to their registration forms suffers from this problem. Thing is, bot makers have more time and energy to devote to one task than we (being forums, email providers, etc) have to defeating them. While efforts to make something they cant beat do happen, they are few and far between (and get beaten). Its just like the Anti-virus world and the world of medicine. We can do some, but we'll always be reactionary.

Non standard skins: I love phpbb, I really do. I despise the styles and trying to edit making them. I don't know why, but I absolutely hate it. I can do it, but its a long and grueling process (for me). But don't discount the possibility of a non standard skin coming. I won't give any sort of date

Unused forums: not very high on my list of things to do, but since you mentioned it, I'll help your eyes a bit.

Web Site: I'll leave it at we're working on things, and provide no more details after that. There are 3 people doing actual maintaining work on MSF, all of them are unpaid volunteers and have other things on their plate as well as MSF (like school, employment, etc), of those three Kimiko and I tend to be comic relief. Good thing too, Eirien's jokes suck :o We do think about MSF though, don't worry (if I wasn't thinking about MSF, would I make such witty and thoughtful replies? See what I meant about humor? I'm awesome).

Also, your comment about "making it clunkier"? If we improve/work on/add to the anti-bot security, it will make it "clunkier" for users to register. You cant have it easy and hard at the same time. More security means more inconvenience. thats the trade off.

[Mitera Nikkou]

Hey, you better see those reports. I put precious time and effort making silly comments.

But, yeah, that's sort of why I recommended manual registration. The fact that we get few real registrations, versus the the increased junk accounts, makes it ideal for preventing all spam from registered accounts. You just need someone to keep an eye on their inbox daily, so those few good accounts aren't inconvenienced much, if at all.

As for skins, I don't like the current one that's the default. It's backwards. That's all I've got to say. ;/

Hey, there's four working on the website! You just don't know how that can be. *_*

[Xia]

Hey, you better see those reports. I put precious time and effort making silly comments. :P

I've delegated Helel to the task of replying to all your silly comments

As for skins, I don't like the current one that's the default. It's backwards. That's all I've got to say. ;/

There is is the subsilverpro one if you want it not backwards.

Hey, there's four working on the website! You just don't know how that can be. *_*

or are there...

[Kyunji]

Kyunji: Yeah, not likely to happen, we don't actually like doing anything.

Ouch. I guess I was being a prick there. Sorry. I'm just tired of seeing this site slowly deteriorate despite many promises of a brighter future.

Visual confirmation is enabled, but its already been busted by bot makers. almost all of the best ones have been busted. I can look around for different phpbb mods for registration, but I pretty much know the answer. phpbb and almost all forum software I've ever used and know about suffers from this problem (and phpbb still hasn't lost business, still gaining actually). In fact, almost every place that has anti-bot stuff to their registration forms suffers from this problem. Thing is, bot makers have more time and energy to devote to one task than we (being forums, email providers, etc) have to defeating them. While efforts to make something they cant beat do happen, they are few and far between (and get beaten). Its just like the Anti-virus world and the world of medicine. We can do some, but we'll always be reactionary.

Okay, that makes sense. But none of the other (admittedly few) message boards I browse seem to have problems with spambots, and none of them require manual registration. Unless they have administrative teams that are paying a lot more attention than they seem to be, they're doing something that MSF isn't, and it seems to be working. Maybe it's just selective banning of IP ranges, like you mentioned.

Non standard skins: I love phpbb, I really do. I despise the styles and trying to edit making them. I don't know why, but I absolutely hate it. I can do it, but its a long and grueling process (for me). But don't discount the possibility of a non standard skin coming. I won't give any sort of date

Perfectly understandable. I don't really have the right to complain about the skin anyway since I can't code whatsoever.

Unused forums: not very high on my list of things to do, but since you mentioned it, I'll help your eyes a bit.

Thank you. I know it's not a high priority, but getting rid of unnecessary elements makes the forums feel a lot less cluttered.

Web Site: I'll leave it at we're working on things, and provide no more details after that. There are 3 people doing actual maintaining work on MSF, all of them are unpaid volunteers and have other things on their plate as well as MSF (like school, employment, etc), of those three Kimiko and I tend to be comic relief. Good thing too, Eirien's jokes suck We do think about MSF though, don't worry (if I wasn't thinking about MSF, would I make such witty and thoughtful replies? See what I meant about humor? I'm awesome).

That's great. I honestly wasn't sure who was in charge of this site anymore. There was the big "okay, we're restarting MSF" announcement back at the beginning of the year, then a long period of basically no updates, followed by the new administration mysteriously disappearing. As long as someone, somewhere, is working on the site, I'm happy. I can understand if it takes time, what with jobs and school, but I'd really love to see this site get a proper restart.

Also, your comment about "making it clunkier"? If we improve/work on/add to the anti-bot security, it will make it "clunkier" for users to register. You cant have it easy and hard at the same time. More security means more inconvenience. thats the trade off.

Yes, but typing in a few letters and being done with registration is almost always going to be smoother and faster than waiting for an administrator to manually authorize an account.

To be perfectly honest, I know that administrator account authorization won't affect the site much if at all right now, but I'm worried it might preclude the boards' growth in the future. As little as I do to help MSF, I do care for it.

... Ugh. Feel free to ignore as much of that mess of quotes and responses as you like. I tried to keep it compact for quick reading, but I'm not good at keeping things simple.