Topic: The Asylum now requires human level intellect to sign up!

Hello fellow inmates,

sad day indeed, I finally installed a captcha for the Asylum sign up process.

I went with the famous recaptcha - it's free, it's public service (digitizes old books)
and it was a breeze to integrate. oh, and it also fofers sound for the visually impaired.

Hopefully this will cut down on the spam a lot. If it turns out that this does not help,
we'll start requiring captchas on the first 10 posts or so.

So long,

->Tyberius Prime

bummer

Shame, but as you said, it's useful and accessible, so I guess it's not that bad of a last resort -- though it's a shame that it's necessary.

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I think the problem now is that human level intellect (of some sort) has become their latest tool. They are monitoring and responding to (as well as expanding) their own threads.

Yeah, escalation and therin effects and all that.

Bummer deal.

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles

White Hawk: I hate it when you're right.

So, who has any suggestion how to comp with this plague?

so long,

->Tyberius Prime

First few posts of a user have to be reviewed by Users. Which does have the side-effect of less new users actually staying. But i guess all the atomatic systems arent realy safe against a human spammer.

Tell me if I'm wrong, but you could start by adding "no-follow" attributes to signatures and URLs posts ? perhaps spamming this forum wouldn't be as appealing?

we already have a no-follow in everything under 'mad scientist laboratory' where we move all threads that we don't delete (mostly because inmates already commented on them).

Personally, it doesn't seem to make one iota of a difference that their threads are all deleted /moved within 15 minutes of posting...

How hard would it be to make threads and posts from level 0 ( and potentially also level 1 ) users only visible to logged in users ?

Blacknight's idea of some sort of user/madSci seal of trust could work if it was a one click action, like on social web sites with a reputation/karma scheme ( think StackOverflow ). MadSci's vote would weigh in more of course, but it'd still take a couple of down votes for a user account to be shut down.

quote:

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Tyberius Prime said:

we already have a no-follow in everything under 'mad scientist laboratory' where we move all threads that we don't delete (mostly because inmates already commented on them).

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Pardon my bluntness, I'm sure you know better, but I had a quick check and it doesn't seem to be the case, apart from This thread Only the topic at the top of the thread seems to be no-follow.

captchas don't work anymore ...

What about having a "period of grace" sort of thing - meaning that forums can be read but not posted to until a certain amount of time has passed?

Basically, my idea is this :

Human Spammers generally are working for someone paying them, right? So they work according to rules.

Does anyone know what sort of rules they work under? Information is is key here. Get to know how and under what rules they work, and devise a system that works against that.

Like Time=Money, right?

So if the potential spammer has to wait X time before being able to post, I think that may be a negative incentive.

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles

kimson: Huh? Why was that button of? and why did it apply nofollow then in the first place?
And how was this ever supposed to work when it just inserted nofollow on creating/editing when a thread was in a no-follow forum?

Well, now about everything in those threads is nofollow.
I think about applying the same to anybody with <15 post count (yeah, post count is useful all of the sudden), just for their posts. But of course that might mean that the spammers simply add a lot more meaningless threads/posts...

@Webshaman: that may put off genuine new users (though we don't often get any). I know I joined up here to begin with because it seemed like a place that had members who knew what they were on about and I could instantly post my question.

But I do like the Karma thing. I think GameFaqs has a Karma rule where new users can only post in existing topics to begin with, before they earn enough Karma (which is naturally gained from posts that aren't complained against) to create their own threads/topics.

Perhaps we could also have Karma for using certain UBB codes also such as the URL one

At least this way, if Spammers are doing this for a day job and trying to post just to get Karma, we will hopefully be able to judge them as Spammers and remove their accounts, and even make Karma only be rewarded once every 24hrs so they can't fast track through.

Problem with that is that they will then start spamming open threads - which is worse, actually.

Because moving such threads to the Basement would be detrimental to the forums.

At least now it is somewhat easier and less destructive.

Any other ideas out there?

How about allowing them to post, but only in one forum (like the Basement which does not show up on Google, etc and has Nofollow) so that we can give them Karma points there, so that they can become full-fledged members?

So spam there would not be a problem - because that is where spam lands, anyway. And real members would be quickly migrated from there with their first post after it was Karma-ized by an Inmate.

We could label them "newly admitted" until they "move up"...

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles

(Edited by WebShaman on 07-30-2009 13:36)

I like this Karma idea too, personally. It is true that using no-follow with links from people who truly contribute to this forum for a long time and who could benefit from a follow link is not great, especially that some of your links guys are highly relevant and valuable to the community. I have seen forums where you are not allowed to post a link in your first x posts, and it seems to work fine.
For these real contributors mentioned above, it could also be interesting to allow them to specify whether links should be follow or no-follow depending on the post, which I have seen in some forum I can't think of at the moment; so that it will give weight to valuable links.

They're pretty standard these days anyways.

I like the karma idea. Karma-less users should not be able to 'give' karma though, or they'll just 'karma' themselves up...

So, how long before we have a sig contest for a Karma Chameleon now? ... ::crickets chirping::

What? Me, spam? Never

--

Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.

Karma - I don't like it.

Better make a Newcomers (or newly-admitted) sub-forum where they can say hello and then any of the level III+ members can approve them for better privileges. Nothing except hello and a few introductory sentences allowed in the newly-admitted forum. This ensures that new people get full privileges fast and spammers can't litter anyones' threads.

edit: additionally e-mail notifications to approved new members could be nice, also name of the approver should be saved and visible next to the hello post

(Edited by Arthurio on 08-01-2009 23:20)

Interesting video I came across about recaptcha: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aszl5avDtek

Argh, but the beauty of the Asylum is that it's quick and easy for people to make a post, I realise now we need to cater for handling Spam accounts more than new signups, but let's face it, these halls are getting quieter day by day, making it harder for someone to sign up, or having to wait on admins to be around to authenticate new users is just going to be a nightmare!

If someone genuine comes along and makes a post it needs to be just as findable as any other post.

If you don't like the Karma idea, how about a report spam button that *anyone* can use, this will either send a PM/email to a Mad Scientist, or send a message AND disable the post until it's been verified.

Sorry to be so changeable, but I think Blaise's idea makes a lot of sense, with the caveat that login should be provided when submitting spam reports (just like a post, but without contributing to the thread).

how about either a simple 'no links in the first few posts' policy,
or alternativly 'no mentioning ('dvd' AND 'avi') in your first posts?

(posts would be 'softly' rejected with an error message where the problem is).

Edit: On a side node, so far I haven't banned any spammer accounts - they apperantly have it in their SOP to create a new one every time anyhow.

(Edited by Tyberius Prime on 08-03-2009 13:31)

well... that's not gonna work as todays 'I need javascript/php help' spam attack showed.

Black listing keywords is a never ending game, and it might encourage spammers to posts messages in C0wbh0y style with countless typos to bypass the filters.

For now, a shoe string solution could be to set all links from level 0 and I users to nofollow. It's sub-optimal but it will buy some time to figure a better solution.

quote:

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Lord_Fukutoku said:

So, how long before we have a sig contest for a Karma Chameleon now?

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I'm sorry I have no technical advice to offer to alleviate the situation but it does seem that we need a gatekeeper of one form or another.
I have a large plank of wood with a rusty nail through one end that might come on handy. Would it be impracticable to check the first post from a new inmate before it is published?

Update
The one spammer type poster I tackled recently, eventually removed all the stolen material from "Doc" Russell Brown off their site. Russell Brown contacted me during all this and between us I think we frightened them off. He sent his thanks to the Asylum for assisting him. He's a lurker don't you know.

Sweeet! Good job, Tao!

WebShaman | The keenest sorrow (and greatest truth) is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles

No links for the first few posts works well, in my experience...

On the subject of registrations, I tried to sign up yesterday and never got an email. Tried again today and it worked. Hello!

@revjx2: welcome to the asylum, watch out for the squid, make sure to have a nose around the ->faq (even if it's been pretty much dormant).

Regarding your e-mail: that's weird. Well, I had a look in the asylum's user account, and found this:
<[Edit: youraddress]@googlemail.com>: Recipient address rejected: Policy Rejection-
--SENDER_QUOTA_REJECTION-- (in reply to RCPT TO command)

Guess we have a temporary dreamhost/gmail issue right there.
Since the second message made it it's all gone now.