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Where are all the NEW users???

36 replies [Last post]
Thu, 01/21/2021 - 10:28
#31
MikeGravelle
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Joined: 01/01/2021
View of a new user

Firstly, I fully appreciate that being an admin is a thankless task and you are taking on a burden for the benefit of us all, so my thanks to you.

A couple of observations as a new member:
The initial email did state it was a manual registration process it didn't state how long it would take. I therefore chased several times, which will have filled your in box more and was frustrating for me as í didn't know if there was a problem.

The email gave an incorrect response address (registration missing the second r)

I don't know anything about the bot risk but other sites manage with automated processes so it must be something that can be mitigated.

Michael

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Thu, 01/21/2021 - 15:25
#32
questccg
questccg's picture
Online
Joined: 04/16/2011
I caught ONE bot a while ago

MikeGravelle wrote:
Firstly, I fully appreciate that being an admin is a thankless task and you are taking on a burden for the benefit of us all, so my thanks to you.

No problem ... Welcome to BGDF.com!

MikeGravelle wrote:
The email gave an incorrect response address (registration missing the second r)

I fixed that after you pointed it out. Indeed there was a TYPO. Got that squared off and FIXED.

MikeGravelle wrote:
I don't know anything about the bot risk but other sites manage with automated processes so it must be something that can be mitigated.

Anything OTHER than "manual" was letting BOTS into the forum. The last time I found a BOT who responded to three (3) threads and created one of its own too. At that time Rich was the admin and he deleted the comments and the thread and also blocked the USER who posted the messages.

They were all gibberish... All English words ... But the sentences did not make sense. Could be someone who is NOT a Native English Speaker, IDK! But for sure the messages were all mumbo-jumbo and were NOT on topic.

So it will remain MANUAL as a policy on BGDF.com is NOT to delete things.

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Thu, 01/21/2021 - 15:46
#33
FrankM
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Joined: 01/27/2017
Mumbo-jumbo

questccg wrote:
They were all gibberish... All English words ... But the sentences did not make sense. Could be someone who is NOT a Native English Speaker, IDK! But for sure the messages were all mumbo-jumbo and were NOT on topic.

So it will remain MANUAL as a policy on BGDF.com is NOT to delete things.

If anyone here really misses that kind of meaningful interaction, go to wolframalpha.com and type in "thirty random words" :)

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Thu, 01/21/2021 - 15:54
#34
Jay103
Jay103's picture
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Joined: 01/23/2018
FrankM wrote:questccg

FrankM wrote:
questccg wrote:
They were all gibberish... All English words ... But the sentences did not make sense. Could be someone who is NOT a Native English Speaker, IDK! But for sure the messages were all mumbo-jumbo and were NOT on topic.

So it will remain MANUAL as a policy on BGDF.com is NOT to delete things.

If anyone here really misses that kind of meaningful interaction, go to wolframalpha.com and type in "thirty random words" :)


Or search here on Oberlander. It wasn't him, was it?

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Thu, 01/21/2021 - 16:11
#35
questccg
questccg's picture
Online
Joined: 04/16/2011
I'm a headbanger ... NOT!

Jay103 wrote:
Or search here on Oberlander. It wasn't him, was it?

No ... At least Oberlander you could kind of understand. This was more "gibberish" that actual sentences. Rich deleted the comments... Because they were in several threads. Just a bunch of words, that somehow seemed to say something but in reality NOT.

I agree that Oberlander was sometimes hard to understand. But at least most of what he was writing made SENSE.

That last BOT... Just kind of used the FORMAT of English in how to structure sentences... But the content just was un-readable. We definitely knew that it was a BOT ... So Rich blocked/banned the user.

@FrankM: No it was not just RANDOM words. They were sentences that just did not make any English sense. So my guess is the BOT was programmed to follow English Sentence Syntax ... But the messages it was sending were not cohesive or understandable.

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Thu, 01/21/2021 - 17:06
#36
pelle
pelle's picture
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Joined: 08/11/2008
I saw something scary the

I saw something scary the other day that was basically the opposite of that, a static web forum that looked like just a real archived web forum, but in fact every post was a copy from some old post on USENET. Took some time to notice something was off.

A bit off topic, but spammers/scammers get creative... On the tigsource (indie gamedev) forum a while ago some spambot got an account and created threads by using titles and texts from reddit r/gamedev posts. Much more difficult to spot than RANDOM English.

I agree manual approval is probably the only way, unless you have the resources of huge corporations that can monitor user activity in ways admins here could never do.

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