Team FF, UNITE!
 

Sorry, out of ideas for good thread titles.

Anyway, as you may have noticed it has become incredibly difficult for new members to join the :ff:, which can be good or bad depending on your perspective, but I lean toward 'bad' just because I think there are people out there who might enjoy this place and vice versa.

The problem is that the brave warrior livius drusus lost interest in spending hours of her life parsing hundreds of new bot registrations trying to find humans, and quite frankly I never HAD that interest. I went through and deleted hundreds of pending registrations about a week ago and switched from captcha to questions on the registration form, but the well is still filling up with bots.

So, any thoughts on how we can make it easier for real humans to join?

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

Perfectly reasonable thread title.

I wonder if "thank posts until someone notices you" is a viable general process.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

How would ancient Rome have addressed this? Barbarians at the gates! But some of them could become citizens.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

Ideas that probably won't fly, but while I'm brainstorming ...

A refundable $50 deposit

A forum or chat area open to anyone who passes the captcha (I hate captchas, I probably am a robot) or questionnaire you have at any point
And then crowd-source the admissions process to all of us

Spread the load over a number of mods - who could also police the rules - this is such a great idea I wonder why it hasn't been tried before

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

I'm willing to spend a half-hour a day or so to suss out bots. But I think a captcha (even though I find them annoying, myself) would help.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

Or a non-refundable $5, even, would probably keep spammers out. Maybe you could bypass that requirement by submitting an essay instead.

And yes, definitely let us help sort through the registrations. If several of us were working on it, and could also ban any spammers that accidentally get through, we might be able to stay on top of it.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

Reporting for duty to look for humans among the bots, and report back on the most amusing bot names. :salute:

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

Same here, happy to look through bots for any real humans. :cyborg:

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

I'll even throw in a website. :spend:

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

I would be willing to comb through the bots as well.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

Another place I haunt has a few regulars with some very weak mod powers, as in a single power. For a week or so into a new account's existence they can eliminate that poster's account and all posts/threads from that account. That works most of the time.

Some spammers make an account and let it sit for even more than a year before the spamming starts.

UNRELATED IDEA:
Allow posting from new signups in The Archway forum as a default.
Or, a new forum that isn't visible to the outside world similar to the Cloaca.
Or, maybe allow posting only in the Cloaca.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

I like a new, invisible form: "Unclassified Dross."

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

Can you make it so that a potential new member could create a single introductory thread, in a sandbox area, from which we could group vet them? Maybe make them create a single introductory thread with a yes/no poll and an a personal introduction, and we'd vote them up or down. Get 10 yes votes and they are in like Flynn?

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

If that's the direction to go, let's go all the way:

https://i.makeagif.com/media/7-13-2015/6upqf3.gif

That aside, the voting mechanism looks like a 'fun' coding challenge and even 'funner' code maintenance challenge.

"Dross" has a cringy insulting feel to it, might just be me.

Simplest solution I see right now would be hide the Archway, and allow posting to any fresh signup. Certainly it will fill up with Vietnamese penis growth spam but hidden it gets no Google Fu, and is easily ignorable by the average poster. Hell, I've seem some forum posters turn spam into freeform poetry just for the giggles.

Add to that the mechanism where a few forum regulars would have Mod Powerz Lite to do spam cleanup detail on Brand New accounts, should be easy for our Absentee Philosopher Kings to continue to forget this place is a thing. :)

(Press gang The Man and JoeP into the job.)

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

So you are telling me that a blood sample is not a requirement to join as I had been led to believe?

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

Shit, I thought it read 'sacrifice'. Welp, too late now.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

So what's your point? That this forum would NEVER engage in the belittling of posters for our petty amusement?

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

Only once they've demonstrated that they deserve it.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

:fixed:

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

:fixed:

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

:fixed:

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

I have no idea what you fun loving monkeys are up to, but I would be willing to throw some cash or time into something.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

I’m extremely lazy about deleting spam and also about manually activating people’s accounts, so what I did on my own board was left it basically open for anyone who could access the site to register, but I blocked certain countries from even being able to access the board through, IIRC, robots.txt. IIRC it was mostly China and Vietnam that were responsible for some 95% of the spam or something. I don’t think we received a single spambot for some five years, though they’ve started trickling in again.

Of course, this means people in those countries can’t access the site, so it probably wouldn’t be a solution ideal for this place.

I’d probably be willing to delete spam from time to time if needed. It might be a better approach than manually activating accounts. Let’s be honest: if your account doesn’t get activated within a day or two, you’re liable to forget about a board even existing. The ones like Limoncello who stick around are rare indeed.

I might have more to say at some point, but it’s 5am, which raises the question: why am I actually up? (On one level, I know the answer: I’ve been encoding Marathon gameplay videos for my YouTube channel. But still: why this late? Fuck it. I’m off to sleep. Hopefully.)

(Edited to note the irony of two ostensibly communist countries being responsible for so much spam. I think Russia might’ve been the third country I forgot about.)

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

So what are you thinking vm?

I also volunteer help out with the bot patrol, as long you pay us all in lupins.

Re: Team FF, UNITE!
 

:look: