too serious???

[Chip]

...Mary accidentally deleted my post. I am too tired to rewrite it.

Chip

[Mary R]

Well Chip ol' chap, you are not the only member who cares about spam, but I have to admit that when I first opened my inbox and saw all the "approve me!" e-mails, I got a little sick to my stomach. That's an awful lot of inbox clutter--practically spam itself! From what I gather with the Adagio crew, it all goes to their business accounts, which just makes it even worse for them. So I do understand and sympathize with the shut down of admin approval.

I've looked through the php stuff, and the only way I can see to relieve the Adagio crew from inbox overload is to demote the lot of 'em to non-admin status. Clearly this is not a viable option. If there was a way to direct the approvals to a single person/common account, I think admin approval could be effective. Unfortunately, with it going to everyone listed as admin, it's just a massive headache.

[Eastree]

As a moderator of another forum, I know how bad spam can be. We never had to implement anything like the email approval, but then again, we had hundreds of active users and proportionately higher new accounts being made.

But any way, any method of reducing spam is good, to an extent. the easy ones don't waste time, but they're not failsafe. The manual options are more thorough, but of course take a lot of individuals' time. It's just a matter of finding what is best for your forum's moderation team.

[Mary R]

Oh. F*cking. Shit.

Chip, I'm so sorry! I accidentally deleted your message! I thought I hit the "Quote" option, but I think I hit edit instead. Usually when I want to reply to someone, I do the quote option so that I can easily see their text as I'm composing my response, and then I delete the quote before I post.

But I was posting as you and didn't know it and now I've lost your wonderful post! *Waaaaaail!*

To the rest of you all...it was wonderful and impassioned and well thought out and...oh! Shit.



Here was the problem: Basically Chip had sort of solved the spam problem by setting new member accounts to be admin-approved before activating. Unfortunately, this sort of flooded everyone's inbox with e-mails saying "Activate me!"...Chip's, mine, Xine's...and everyone else at Adagio. From what I gather, Michael put the kibosh on it saying it was a sort of a violation of 'innocent before proven guilty' scenario, and a basic nuisance.

[Chip]

Well, this is a much stronger version of my letter that Mary accidently deleted.

...the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one....(lol, Spock, Wrath of Khan)

Thus the admin should suck it up for the multitudes of tea followers who gander at teachat. Or find another solution.

Readers of teachat should not have to be exposed to nude pics or sickening spam. The mods should not have to be exposed to it in order to get rid of it when 90% of it could be prevented by the admin approval of new members function. It is Xine, Mary and Me who have to look at this crap. It sickens me that Adagio will not help us out on this and will instead needlessly expose us to this spam. We must open the post in order to ban the user and IP...we must expose ourselves to this.

To be quite frank, I am quite disappointed in this turn of events and the timing of it it is equally disturbing. Also by only giving this half a day (edit...it was only 2-3 hours) and then shutting it down...well, to be honest has more than upset me.

I have thought long and hard as to how to take proactive measures to clean up the forum. It is time to take back the forum from the invasive spammers.

I do not buy the stance of innocent til proven guilty comment. That is folly. If you would see the types of new members that come onto the forum, it would disgust you. There are simply obvious spammers with www's to match. There are new members who simply reregister everyday. One guy includes a link for incest every single day, sometimes twice. Many are the obvious viagra spammers. It is sickening and repulsive and offensive.

Come on Adagio, wake up and help the mods out. Don't be ridiculous.

[Wesli]

Well, the admin approval would be great, but it seems that then you would get too many emails.
If the pictures are what bother you, then the #1 idea I've heard is to not allow linking during the first _______.

[Chip]

Well, the admin approval would be great, but it seems that then you would get too many emails.
If the pictures are what bother you, then the #1 idea I've heard is to not allow linking during the first _______.

Thanx for your input.

I had proposed this a while back...actually restricting links, pics and ICQs for the first month and first at least the first 5 posts...

But this is more difficult to apply to the forum. There is not an existing setting for this. It would have to be written into the forum programming I presume. Xine has been attempting to accomplish this with their computer genious.

So, then I found the admin setting for new members. I personally am not bothered by the emails becauser they simply go into my bulk folder.

And I should stress, the main reason there are so many emails for new members is because there are so many "passive spammers" who reregister each and every day. Out the the 12ish emails we received in 2 hours, maybe 1 or 2 were legit new members.

This would be a necessary evil if we want to clean up the forum, unless they want to go to the expence of rewriting the forum programming to restrict new members from posting links, pics, and ICQs.

[ABx]

This is phpBB, isn't it? If so, someone might look at the phpBB site to see what mods are out there. I know there's a number of them to stop spammers. You'd likely still need something like admin approval, but it would likely cut a lot of it down. Even if it's not phpBB, I'm sure whatever board this is has mods. Someone with access to the server would need to do it, though, and there is always risk involved when it comes to putting in 3rd party modifications.

[Chip]

This is phpBB, isn't it? If so, someone might look at the phpBB site to see what mods are out there. I know there's a number of them to stop spammers. You'd likely still need something like admin approval, but it would likely cut a lot of it down. Even if it's not phpBB, I'm sure whatever board this is has mods. Someone with access to the server would need to do it, though, and there is always risk involved when it comes to putting in 3rd party modifications.

Agreed...3rd party modifications are risky.

Perhaps phpBB can place some add ons. Good points.

[Space Samurai]

I deleted the post, cos 1, part of it was based on a wrong assumption, and 2 I don't want to accidentally say something that might offend Chip.

[Mary R]

Forgive me if I missunderstand, but it sounds like you didn't run the plan by adagio, first.

No, Chip ran it by Xine and I and got a go ahead. 'Course we didn't realize that a) our inboxes would gain weight and b) everyone with Admin clearance would get 'em too.

[Space Samurai]

Okay then, I apologize for making a wrong assumption.

I'm still thankful to what the two of you do.

[Chip]

Space, my gosh, dude, I would never unilaterally take such an action. What would be next, changing your avatar.

You are welcome by the way.

[Wesli]

Space, my gosh, dude, I would never unilaterally take such an action. What would be next, changing your avatar.

You are welcome by the way.

[Mary R]

Space, my gosh, dude, I would never unilaterally take such an action. What would be next, changing your avatar.

[insert Mwah-ha-ha!! here]