AutoHotkey Community

What I think about registration is that it is used to identify the person who is posting, to contact him more easily if there are any problems with the postings and to prevent this person from creating spam. A guest wouldn't be able to be identified, so he/she can do whatever he/she wants without ever knowing any way to contact this person.

If one abuses continously the "guest system", everybody who uses it pays the price of being required to register. If you want a guest system that is always going to work, then block the spammers from even getting into the internet which is the ISP's fault. If you want to stay anonymous, is a lot better to register and put most fields blank than being as a guest and someone takes over your identity and creates spam with it.

I understand about "registering or not registering" problems, but sometimes the solution is simple but restrictive. I don't like vandals and spammers doing what they do everywhere where guest posting is enabled. But if you think closely at why registration exists, you would know about what I'm talking about.

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I also forgot to make the very important point that if you start a new thread as a Guest and then need to modify it (such as to say you fixed it, update it in the case of a script, or even delete), it requires a forum moderator to fix it, but even then it still can appear as a guest post when searching in the forum. This is why in the script forum it's very important to be logged in when posting a script, otherwise you can't update the script which is usually in the first post.

Maybe there should be a poll about this. I mean, how many users would really object to only allowing registered users to create new threads? I bet the majority of users on this site are already registered and only tend to post as a Guest by accident (forget to log in/got logged out) or are sometimes lazy - but rarely when creating a new thread I think; usually most Guest posts are replies.

I think it's best to allow Guests to start new topics, at least in the Ask for Help section. This is because a lot of people think registration is time-consuming (even though it currently isn't), so tend not to do it when wanting to ask only a single question for which they haven't been able to find an answer.

Although there have been problems with guests posting a favorite script and then later not being able to edit the first post, it hasn't been too frequent. Still, it's something to keep in mind as an advantage to requiring registration for starting new topics in the Scripts and Functions forum.

In any case, if spam becomes a worse problem, the other forums might change to allow new topics to be started only by registered users (as you suggested).

Thanks for the ideas.

Hmm, I don't think so. The SPAM (casinos, blackjack, ...) which has been posted here recently was mainly answers to already existent threads.

The only solution I see apart from completely disallow posting with guest rights (I understand why this is obviously not an option) is some kind of automatic SPAM filter that recognizes bad URLs or keywords like casino, lucky, betting, roulette, s*x, viagra, ...
But I don't know if there exists s.th like this for phpbb.

Cheers
AGU

I don't think the spam has become too bad yet, although it seems to come in batches (is it just you, Chris, that removes it all?). I think if changes are made to the forum rules, they should be made in a way that generally benefits everyone (i.e. boost the community), not just for the sake of stopping spam.

That's my opinion, but it's not my decision of course

I hadn't seen very much spam as replies - maybe it was removed before I saw it.



Sounds like a job for AutoHotkey

The forum has been slightly customized to help block spam. In addition, more changes will go into effect if the situation ever worsens.

Toralf has also been a great help by deleting a lot of spam before anyone even sees it.

Spam filters are not easy. There are already posts with the word lottery (concerning distributions of sums of random numbers), so filtering them out would be bad. They could contain words like roulette or betting, too, but I have yet to come up with a post with natural script enhancement (a certain part of the script would be greatly increased in length without administering any synthetic chemicals).

Funny stuff.

...I hate coming to forums where I HAVE to register...


...I (normally) don't wanna register cuz I don't wanna get spam by giving out my e-mail to a website I'm only gonna use once...sometime I google, find a post, know the answer, but can't post without registering, so I can't help them. Their loss. I registered here, cuz I didn't fear spam (too much, you didn't get my ISP e-mail address, but no one gets THAT! lol) & I wanted to own my name, be able to edit posts & knew I'd be here more than once...etc.


I think it'd be ok to only allow Guests in Ask for Help, Bug Reports & General Chat. There are forums where you can't even post in the Help section as a Guest, but what if you have trouble logging in? huh? what do they want you to do? You could probably go ahead & disallow Guests from even replying in Announcements, cuz they don't really need in there.

This might be best...

• Full Guest Access: Ask for Help, Bug Reports, General Chat
• No or Only Reply Guest Access: Scripts & Functions, Wish List, Utilities & Resources
• No Guest Access: Announcements

...this might be overkill (a new mod) but you could try to find a Captcha mod that forces Guests to answer a Captcha to post & to register...but registered people don't need to answer a Captcha to post.

Searching "Captcha" in the phpbb mod db is useless, they call all variations "Visual Confirmation", so if you know what they're really called your screwed...anyway...

[2.0.12] Visual Confirmation for Guests

...there is also mention of something in the contrib directory, so you might have some variation of a Captcha mod already installed, but not turned on. But this mod for Guest posting might be a little different than what's default (that might only be for registering).

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Thanks for the links and suggestions. They'll definitely be considered if the war against spam needs to be escalated.

Combined with having the minimum time between posts, this would prevent any or most kinds of automatic and semi-automatic spamming to occur. This would also prevent someone from posting spam all at once.

At least with the steps above, it would make the spammer's efforts and time to be wasted. Why would someone post spam when it is known it is hard enough to actually fill a post with spam and post one? Even if the spammer is corageous enough to post, there would be a moderator to delete it right after.

You're right. A lot of spam comes to my mailbox every day and I just put all messages from unknown people directly for deletion.

However, when you register, there is an option for your profile not to show your e-mail address, and I believe the AHK forums are secure enough to hold the e-mail address and, at least for me, a password is not a big problem to remember.

If it is possible to prevent automatic spam, then I would like guest posting to be allowed anywhere. It won't matter where the spam post is located - this post will always be an important thing for deletion for a moderator. Thus there is actually no reasoning for limiting guest access to some forum. All forums should have guest posting either enabled or disabled in my opinion.

Spam posting is not going to be a big problem if it is slowed down enough to be even slower than moderator's time to find and to delete a spam post.

This could help, but spammers might use links to hosted websites into some different hosting company and you would block any pages from the hosting company domain. Blocking keywords might also help, but I also think bots sometimes would recognize that a posting has been blocked and would try again with some other different keyword.

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I also hate forums where I have to register also for reading! And I am sometimes sad because I can't post without registration as said before.

But if I am at a forum more then one or two times I will always register, because Thalon is MY nick and only mine. I also do not like postings with failures (so I know them. I really do not know how good my english is ^^), so I like to edit them.

From my point of view Guest-Postings could be allowed to:
+ Ask for Help
+ Bug Reports

All the other sections are for repetitive posters:
+ Scripts & Functions
+ Wish List
+ Utilities & Resources
+ General Chat
+ Announcements

I have seen much Spam already here...
But maybe the mods can count the average-deleted posts of some days?
I think nobody knows really how much Spam is really here...

Thalon

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