How to proceed ......

[Mr_White]

...... with those who now register?

System puts them on inactive user (which is good).

But now we need to establish some rules (or at least gather some ideas), how to proceed?

Do we 1.) activate all of them (which I would rather not suggest) or
do we 2.) not activate them until they contact us and tell us why they need to be able to access this forum (which I would suggest)?

If we decide for option numero 2 should we activate them for a given time with limited possibilities (like a "read only" plus a "reply to open topics" option) and than later, maybe after some weks or even months, give them a chance to also open up new topics?

Any other ideas? Let´s share ideas and than decide how to proceed.

[noproblemo]

Whatever process we choose, we'll have to tell our guests how to proceed and what are the rules...

[Mr_White]

Whatever process we choose, we'll have to tell our guests how to proceed and what are the rules...

yes, exactly. But that will be step 2 while step 1 is to know what those rules will be. Right?

[sbando]

Let's wait until everything is fully working, then, we'll start activating accounts.

I repeat, the moderator's cue is a nice feature, the first posts won't appear until a mod aprrove them.

[noproblemo]

Have a look at anti-spam mods available for phpBB:

http://www.phpbb.com/mods/db/index.php?i=browse&mode=group:category&sub=antispam

These ones seem interesting:
- Activation Justification
- Post Count Requirements

[sbando]

The "Advanced Double Activation Pack" is interesting, even though a malicious asshole can still manually flood the board once he/she gets access.

[Mr_White]

Took a glimpse at the inactive users.

First I deleted all those whose email and ip-origin did not match.

Then I deleted those with deadlink emails.

The rest I activated. Let´s see what happens.

[Frigo]

great work Mr_White

[sbando]

Thank you again, man.

[noproblemo]

I've just unbanned *@gmail.com and *@*.com to register a friend of LubaLove, BoiLLeR
BTW, why *.com was banned? It's a bit too much, no?

[Mr_White]

I've just unbanned *@gmail.com and *@*.com to register a friend of LubaLove, BoiLLeR
BTW, why *.com was banned? It's a bit too much, no?

With the unbanning of *@gmail.com I am not too happy, because from my experience 99% of those who register from a gmail adress are spammers.
We will see what happens.

*.com was banned during the spam-attack. Simply forgot to unban that one after the storm was over. My bad.

[Mr_White]

Regarding gmail:

I looked at it and here is the statistic of the last 2 weeks:

100+something people tried registration from a gmail account; 90+something of those I deleted before activation because of mismatches between email adress and origin.

From the other 10+ at least 7 turned out to be spammers - one way or the other. Hence I blocked gmail again. In my humble opinion it looses sense to admit gmail, when more than 90 % coming from there are funny boys and/or spammers.

justmy2cent

[sbando]

Nop is away now, as soon as he's back we'll make up our minds once and for all about registrations and ban-list.

[Mr_White]

....... something wrong here.

Yesterday and today some users got activated (don´t ask me how) automatically.

Look at the admin log. This here:

Mr_White 217.230.44.99 Fri Dec 26, 2008 10:46 pm Successful administration login
Mr_White 217.230.32.194 Fri Dec 26, 2008 4:04 pm User activated
» Luster

proofs that between my afternoon and my evening login no other admin logged in, right?

So, how come the user lolambuco was already active when I logged in at 10:46 pm ? He joined, according to the database at Fri Dec 26, 2008 9:53 pm. Which means I sure did not activate him once I was online on the afternoon, because at that time he had not yet filed for registration. Since according to admin log no other admin was logged in before 10:46 pm, how could he already be activated by that time? Who activated him? Auto activation? To me it looks like that.

nop, sbando or Frigo could you please do some investigation. To me it looks like either something wrong with the technical details or somehow somebody found a way to undermine the activation.
Plus this is not the first time. Already yesterday I had the feeling that one or two user were active although I hadn´t activated them and at the time of their registration no other admin was online.

Sorry to bother you with that, but once again: To me this looks strange and I would like to know how that could happen.

[Mr_White]

..... to prevent spammers I created a new role "Newbies" which is valid for users with less than 10 postings. These I put on moderation queue.

Curious to see if this works out. If so, we now should have a very easy way to sort out spammers before they can afflict the forum.