Campquake Senate

Is it just a bug in my Firefox, or is the Signature section missing in the Profile for everyone?

I can't find mine in IE7 or Firefox.

If your using the white and blue-ish background its bugged and you cant see it. Switch to the black and gold and you can edit it.

Probably missing in the default skin. This darn anti-spam system probably messed it up. It is supposed to limit what fields can be used for a new registration. I've allowed for signature, but doesn't show in profile for me either.

Ugh, that and phpBB just one big mess/target for spam bots etc..

Akira wrote:Probably missing in the default skin. This darn anti-spam system probably messed it up. It is supposed to limit what fields can be used for a new registration. I've allowed for signature, but doesn't show in profile for me either.

Ugh, that and phpBB just one big mess/target for spam bots etc..

If you find any successful methods to stopping spam of any or all kinds with these phpbb forums, send me an e-mail with a description or a link to a detailed description... T_T

Thanks Kibeth - I tried that. But now my Sig is blank! Just about everything is empty except for my name now. Hrmph!

Akira, Are you still having problems with Spammer's registering on our PHPBB board? It had occurred to me that the problem might be that registration is too simple for a robot. Having seen PHPBB board before, a robot can blindly navigate, fill in some crap and hit submit since everything is predictably located...

Why not change things up a little on the registration page? You can require an input and call it something weird that a bot couldn't guess. Like, "What is two plus two?" And you must enter a "4" in that field in order to have your Registration Form accepted. Something that involves a little bit of thinking would be simple for a human, but still out of the grasp for a bot.

I could setup a PHPBB forum at sctf.net that mimics what you have here and write what I'm suggesting for you. But I would need to know what mods and versions you are running.

If you would want to try this, let me know. I still suppose the alternate it to abandon this board and use the other one that we have.

I noticed that PM's aren't working here - so maybe we would want to fix that while I was at it!!

Neophyte wrote:Thanks Kibeth - I tried that. But now my Sig is blank! Just about everything is empty except for my name now. Hrmph!

Akira, Are you still having problems with Spammer's registering on our PHPBB board? It had occurred to me that the problem might be that registration is too simple for a robot. Having seen PHPBB board before, a robot can blindly navigate, fill in some crap and hit submit since everything is predictably located...

Why not change things up a little on the registration page? You can require an input and call it something weird that a bot couldn't guess. Like, "What is two plus two?" And you must enter a "4" in that field in order to have your Registration Form accepted. Something that involves a little bit of thinking would be simple for a human, but still out of the grasp for a bot.

I could setup a PHPBB forum at sctf.net that mimics what you have here and write what I'm suggesting for you. But I would need to know what mods and versions you are running.

If you would want to try this, let me know. I still suppose the alternate it to abandon this board and use the other one that we have.

I noticed that PM's aren't working here - so maybe we would want to fix that while I was at it!!

I want to scrap phpBB altogether, honestly. Some things not working are in result of phpBB file system getting corrupted or affected by anti-spam measures.

Akira wrote:I want to scrap phpBB altogether, honestly. Some things not working are in result of phpBB file system getting corrupted or affected by anti-spam measures.

Well, I for one don't think that this should be such a chore. And it sure sounds like administering this forum is not without it's share of time taken from your real life. I'm happy to switch. Why don't we call a vote in the Senate and if decided so, make the switch. Retire this site and make the YABB (or some other?) the default to answer campquake.net.

Oh, and sorry about the PM spam!

Neophyte wrote:Why not change things up a little on the registration page? You can require an input and call it something weird that a bot couldn't guess. Like, "What is two plus two?" And you must enter a "4" in that field in order to have your Registration Form accepted. Something that involves a little bit of thinking would be simple for a human, but still out of the grasp for a bot.

....could do something better, which is what a LOT of people are doing nowdays - used images with number and letter combos.

Neophyte wrote:

Akira wrote:I want to scrap phpBB altogether, honestly. Some things not working are in result of phpBB file system getting corrupted or affected by anti-spam measures.

Well, I for one don't think that this should be such a chore. And it sure sounds like administering this forum is not without it's share of time taken from your real life. I'm happy to switch. Why don't we call a vote in the Senate and if decided so, make the switch. Retire this site and make the YABB (or some other?) the default to answer campquake.net.

Oh, and sorry about the PM spam!

We don't need a vote to make the switch, if Akira wants to do it so that his life is easier then by all means bro go for it.

I'm all for switching to anything else if it makes admin easier, but I think any alternate solution needs to be tested. (sorry for misp, drunk... again)

Serpent wrote:

Neophyte wrote:Why not change things up a little on the registration page? You can require an input and call it something weird that a bot couldn't guess. Like, "What is two plus two?" And you must enter a "4" in that field in order to have your Registration Form accepted. Something that involves a little bit of thinking would be simple for a human, but still out of the grasp for a bot.

....could do something better, which is what a LOT of people are doing nowdays - used images with number and letter combos.

The spam bots are getting around that as it is, registration here already used an image system. Bots are reading/interpreting the images would you believe.

Akira wrote:The spam bots are getting around that as it is, registration here already used an image system. Bots are reading/interpreting the images would you believe.

Are you serious??? How can that be possible??

There is software/systems out there that can scan/convert text that is in an image, to actual text. That's why most of these images will look funny or are hard to read, as it helps stop the software from obtaining text from the image.

Akira wrote:There is software/systems out there that can scan/convert text that is in an image, to actual text. That's why most of these images will look funny or are hard to read, as it helps stop the software from obtaining text from the image.

ok, lets do it. hehehe