Fugitivus Discussion Forum

I think it's probably time to look into new spam-filter measures. The captcha thing is obviously not working (and it's a potential obstacle to legitimate users), so.

Maybe we could change the permissions for the "New Users" group so that you have to have been a member for at least X amount of time before posting anywhere but the Introduction forum? It could be some nominal amount of time, even just a couple of minutes, but that might be enough to confound/discourage spammers.

Oh, and are we banning the IP addresses that post spam? Can we even do that?

If there's not a way in the admin console already I know there are definitely plugins that do banning. I would be surprised if the option was not already there, however.

IP banning is an option. I just did it to one of our dear spammers. I'm currently investigating modified permissions.

Maybe rather than a time delay, new members can only post in the introduction forum at first, and then when a mod sees that it's an actual intro rather than a wall o' spam, they can be given full access? I think if the mods checked for new intros 2 or 3 times a week, new members could still be brought in in a pretty timely fashion, and then we could rule out time-delay spam. If that would be too much extra work for mods or otherwise unworkable for some reason (my brain is pretty fuzzy today - yay for med change-ups) then please ignore the suggestion. I'm not really a tech person.

I like that idea, Isabel. It's very straightforward to restrict the Newly Registered Users group to posting in the Introduction forum. What I can't figure out is how to control when they are transferred to the generic Registered Users group. The default is after you make 3 posts. I need to do some more googling, I think.

Update:I've made it so Newly Registered Users have read-only access to all fora except the Moderation forum and the Introductions forum. Moderation, they have no access at all (just because that's what it already was, I didn't make that decision in response to spam). In Introduction they have "Limited" access, which means they can post and create topics but can't make polls, for example. I also prevented any Newly Registered user from ever ignoring the "flood limit" (which I hope I am correct in understanding is number of posts per time increment. So they can't make more than, say, one post per minute).

So that's pretty limited. A legitimate user can upgrade automatically to normal forum access by simply posting three times. This information should probably be added to one of our global sticky posts.

And, finally, I'm copying this thread to the Suggestions, Problems, and Concerns forum, and locking it in this one removing it from where it was in the StuffWhatBoys forum.

Thanks Llencelyn.

I have been banning spambot users. I am not sure if it bans their IP address. I think it just bans signing in again with the same user name.

IP banning happens in the ACP, there's a 'ban IPs' section in the 'users & groups' section.

You can also ban-by-IP if you click the username, then click [Banning] next to the username on the profile, then select the left navigation tab for "ban IPs".

This can also be done through the moderation control panel on the main forum, but then you have to remember the IP address you want to ban, whereas doing it through the username autofills the form.