archive.worldofdragon.org

I suggest that close membership for now and make it so that any potential new members need to write to you vie e-mail first so that you can decide if they are genuine or not.

What do you think?

Its getting that way....... its at least once a day now I have to delete posts and remove users......

This reply relates to the locked thread "New User?"

Simon,
instead of giving out your email address in a form that can be easily harvested by spambots - thus increasing the amount of spam that that address will receive - you should publish the address in a form that is easy for a human to understand, but not so easy for a spambot to read.

Something along the lines of "simonhardy72 (at) yahoo.co.uk - replace the (at) with @ and remove the spaces to obtain the email address" should do the trick.


Also, you should make "New User?" sticky so that it stays at the top of the forum.

I'm looking for a better solution..... the New User thread was done in a hurry.....

I see the same thing is happening again. I still think that my original suggestion is the only way to stop it permanently.

Regards,
Steve

Looking at the website addresses (I'm reluctant to check them out) of some of the most recent members, see memberlist.php?mode=&sk=c&sd=d#memberlist , I am highly suspicious of "Bondddd" and "iggblog" - am I the only one to have some doubts?

No, you're not the only one to have doubts. I've been carefully watching the membership grow over the past couple of months, and quite a few of the names have been very suspicious. IMHO it would be a good idea to delete any members that don't make a first post to introduce themselves. After all - there's no sense in signing up if you are never going to post any messages.

Regards,
Steve

True, there has been a significant influx of new members over the last few months, often several each day. Most of these members have not yet posted and some of them may indeed look "suspicious", but we have also had some genuine members, who have contributed value to the forums, coming in during the last few months. I'd hate to see a policy where these members did not feel welcome.

The current process for admitting new members has the benefit that it scales. I am currently helping out with screening, approving and even bouncing board members. True, we have a relatively large group of new board members that have never posted and where some might even look "suspicious". Our spam problem is still pretty moderate and the current process of banning members and deleting posts after the fact works pretty well, in my opinion.

-- Rolf

rolfmichelsen wrote:...but we have also had some genuine members, who have contributed value to the forums, coming in during the last few months. I'd hate to see a policy where these members did not feel welcome.

My suggestion is for a single post just to say 'Hi', which would secure their membership. IMHO a rule like that wouldn't make any potential members feel unwelcome.

Regards,
Steve

Again there seem to be new members with suspicious website addresses, see memberlist.php?mode=&sk=c&sd=d#memberlist and keep clicking down the pages. I doubt that many of the new members without addresses who have yet to post are genuine either.