Artoonix Forum

[KayNine]

At the time of posting this message, the forum counter claims that "...We have 5497 registered users...".
Surely, they are 'members' and not 'users'.
If they were actual Artoonix users, we'd surely see lots and lots of uploaded animations all over the place?

What we have are that many forum member registrations, but there's no way I'd call most of them 'users'. The recent upsurge in stupid and multiple 'Hello I'm new here' posts with promises of being able "... to help others like you have helped me ..." (especially when absolutely no further help is ever forthcoming), shows that it really is time to alter what happens when a new registration takes place. I've commented on this before - but in essence, all it needs is for anyone (or anything if it's a spambot) to NOT have the means to immediately post a message into the forum until it has first been checked by the Admin team. In a way this already happens because those idiotic 'I'm new here' messages get removed very quickly - it's just that at present they get straight through to the forum before this happens.

This type of checking is done on several other forums that I belong to. In one case, the check is made manually by the forum administrator and in another case a 'spambot trap' has been introduced which catches and diverts over 95% of that type of post. These actions make those forums much cleaner and free from the type of infantile silliness that is currently affecting this forum.

Alternatively, make the registration process dependent upon a different system. Some forums use a selection of photographs of objects or animals. 2 or 3 of these are highlighted at random when the registration process starts and the person who wants to register has to click on the appropriate labels which are listed separately. Bots find this MUCH harder to cope with. This wouldn't stop the numpties who just want to post gibberish - but it would certainly help to identify them faster and allow the admin team to issue a warning or to lock them out.

THE MEMBER LIST NEEDS TO ACCURATELY REFLECT THE NUMBER OF FORUM USERS WHO HAVE JOINED FOR THE PURPOSE OF PARTICIPATING.

(Update --- just a few hours later, this had risen to "We have 5512 registered users". That's an an increase of 15. If Artoonix was being used THAT heavily by so many new members, you'd expect to see examples and mentions all over the place, not to mention genuine questions and comments. But you don't. This also suggests to me that the registration process itself needs improving because either it's too easy to bypass the security double-check, or the site is being manually invaded by people who have no intention of contributing.)

If this problem is allowed to persist, the value and reputation of the forum will be damaged ..... I assume that is the pointless intention of those who post all those useless messages or send their spambots to do the job for them.

[KayNine]

Just checked the website again. It's only about 12 hours since my previous post and the new 'member count' is 5546. But there's something even more interesting, and although I'm sure they'll soon be removed very quickly, two supposedly different authors have posted exactly the same message using exactly the same, weird message title ('new sait4'). That surely HAS to mean that spambots can break through the registration system with ease? The question is - is this happening automatically, or are they being directed?

Meanwhile, of course, only about 4 or 5 genuine Artoonix users actually seem to use the forum.

Odd.

[KayNine]

10 days have passed since my last post.

Allegedly, the forum has 358 new 'members' but absolutely no new posts of any type ... no queries, comments or tips (apart from a small number of 'new here' messages which soon get taken down).

Why register when the forum is totally open to be read by anyone and everyone? Registration only offers the option to post messages. Even PM's have been disabled after the spamming problems and, to a large extent, it's only the non-posting 'members' who provide info about their email addresses. (And most of those are bogus).

I don't understand this - not unless all or most of those registrations are bypassing the registration system and being performed by bots.

But why bother?

Anyone got any thoughts or will the only response be ......... more silence?

[andrei]

I don't see any real problem with these inactive registered users because they are ... inactive Actually current phpBB version of the forum should be updated to avoid users management problems and we plan to migrate to the latest version as soon as possible.
Well, participating real users in the discussions is another topic...

[KayNine]