Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Forum has been moved to manual registrations only

Polverone - 19-9-2019 at 11:11

Hi,

Sorry for the long neglect. I am disabling registrations. Only people who email me a registration request, and are able to receive email back, will be able to register now. It was an overwhelming chore for any mod to keep up with the flood of trash. Now it should be manageable. To anyone who already burnt out trying to hold back the flood, I apologize and I understand.

Thanks,
Polverone

WGTR - 19-9-2019 at 11:26

Hey, welcome back!

This sounds like a good idea for now. I hope things are well with you.

Tsjerk - 19-9-2019 at 12:24

Thumbs up good God mother etcetera you are back!

Happy you are back.

XeonTheMGPony - 19-9-2019 at 15:55

Awesome news Can you please give Jsum and some others higher mod powers for the next time you need to take a break or some thing?

Hope you been faring well!

j_sum1 - 19-9-2019 at 16:13

Quote: Originally posted by XeonTheMGPony  
Awesome news Can you please give Jsum and some others higher mod powers for the next time you need to take a break or some thing?

Hope you been faring well!


My powers are probably already more than I can handle thanks.
There is a certain irony in someone with as little knowledge and experience as me being a mod of a chemistry forum. But I have had fun, learned lots and hopefully not made too many mistakes or pissed anyone off too much.


That said, I think there is a need for a better contingency plan in the event that polverone is away for a while again or (perish the thought) incapacitated. It might be expedient for other mods to have access to the manual registration process. I haven't raised this question with polverone or any of the other moderators, but I will.

BromicAcid - 20-9-2019 at 18:05

I was just looking at the Stats tab of the site. I remember back in my day we had about 20% of the members had posted, now it's down to 3.28%, stupid Spam Bots - killing our stats.

DavidJR - 21-9-2019 at 06:28

What's happening with the move to more modern forum software?

solo - 21-9-2019 at 18:44

Welcome back....seems like a long time, but we're all still around .....solo

fusso - 23-9-2019 at 04:29

And need a cleanup too, some bots that registered last month has just spammed.

j_sum1 - 23-9-2019 at 04:48

Quote: Originally posted by fusso  
And need a cleanup too, some bots that registered last month has just spammed.

If you spot something that does not belong, just report it.
Let me say tha the volume of spam has gone way down. Three are always sleeper accounts that register and then spam days or even months later. But these are not many and they will die off pretty quickly with the new system.

Polverone - 24-9-2019 at 09:22

I have manually registered three new accounts since the move to the new email request system. I know that there is still work to purge the backlog of old spammers and spam. But at least now the efforts of myself and other moderators will have a lasting impact.

Thanks for this change especially go to Bert, who personally messaged me urging me to get the problems here under control. This was the most expedient solution I could come up with. My life offline keeps expanding with family and friends in need, a demanding job, and deaths in my family over the past few years. I am doing ok personally but I grow more neglectful here every year. That's not good!

As a partial remedy, I have initiated the manual email registration system and I have set up calendar reminders for myself to look for emailed registration requests and approve them, twice a week.

Right now the process for manual registration is pretty crude: I go to the forum settings, re-enable registration, manually register accounts in a new private browser window, and then turn registrations back off. I also delete any unauthorized accounts that registered during those few minutes of opportunity.

I believe that the power to enable/disable registrations like this requires super-administrator powers. But a regular administrator should try this linkto see if you have the power to enable/disable registrations: https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/cp.php?action=setting...

If there are other super-administrators (or administrators, if it turns out they have the same power above) who are willing to share an email address with the general public, I can update the registration message to add multiple points of contact with their corresponding email addresses.

Cou - 28-6-2020 at 19:37

open registration again?

There hasn't been a new post added to detritus in 2 months now.

i'm really missing seeing clown posts in detritus. it's my go-to forum when i need a good laugh. i consider it one of the hidden humor goldmines of the internet.

Open the floodgates so i can laugh at trolls, cooks, kewls, dumb kids, and scammers again.

j_sum1 - 28-6-2020 at 21:41

Not happening, Cou. Manual registration is to keep the spammers out. I got tired of deleting 70 spam posts three times a day.

Chemorg42 - 29-6-2020 at 10:39

Quote: Originally posted by Cou  
open registration again?

There hasn't been a new post added to detritus in 2 months now.

i'm really missing seeing clown posts in detritus. it's my go-to forum when i need a good laugh. i consider it one of the hidden humour goldmines of the internet.

Open the floodgates so i can laugh at trolls, cooks, kewls, dumb kids, and scammers again.

Though I agree with j_sum1 that the manual registration system is definitely the best option (never having experienced the days of severe spam, I can only imagine how obnoxious it must have been), I can't help but agree that the detritus forum is a "Humour goldmine" as Cou put it.

Chemorg42 - 30-6-2020 at 17:08

Quote: Originally posted by Cou  

There hasn't been a new post added to detritus in 2 months now.

Spoken too soon!:)