Errors

[Battling Maxo]

Tons of 50x errors in the last 2 weeks.

[akreider2]

Are you referring to site down time? If so, I agree.

[calvinhobbesliker]

I agree.

[Col. Ty Webb]

Seems a little better the past two days, but was getting them like crazy earlier in the week.

[Imperious Leader]

It might have something to do with me banning 50 bogus spam accounts each day. I load up about 15 pages of the same link like this:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?action=mlist;sort=registered;start=0;desc

Then in rapid fire ban all the idiots trying to sell shoes and porno. As you can see we already got a new idiot whom i will exterminate shortly.

This work takes me at least 1 hour a day and i really enjoy my work. I also find some time to taunt each of them with insults in the hope that they will try harder to spam, of which i am all too keen to exterminate faster. I can dispatch them while they are trying to post and register, which is my favorite coupe de main.

[calvinhobbesliker]

Who is that idiot. All on that list seem to be fine.

[Imperious Leader]

I got rid of him. He had a globe and a spam site for you to infect your computer.

Look up the accounts with globes and have a look. You don't see any spam because i get rid of them behind the scenes.

Actually if you look on page 26 you will find what i call "the wasteland" ....one after another of these globe spam sites.

I built my "Hadrian's wall" to protect only the first 25 pages. Anything after that is no cleared.

[akreider2]

You can get rid of that membership list.  There isn't any need for it.  Mod the software, or just delete the memberlist page.

At a minimum people shouldn't appear on the members list who have made zero posts.

You can also remove websites from it.

Any of these methods get at spammers whose goal is to post a single link to their website.

[calvinhobbesliker]

You can get rid of that membership list.  There isn't any need for it.  Mod the software, or just delete the memberlist page.

At a minimum people shouldn't appear on the members list who have made zero posts.

You can also remove websites from it.

Any of these methods get at spammers whose goal is to post a single link to their website.

I've calculated it once, and people with 0 posts were 2/3 of that list.

[akreider2]

It is also possible that the slowdown has nothing to do with us. If we are hosted by a company that hosts multiple sites, it could be anywhere from 10-2000 sites sharing your computer.

If we're on a vps or dedicated server - then we might need to throw more resources at it.

Hmm, does anyone know if SMF 2 will be better? It should be out soon.

[Imperious Leader]

I do know that when i ban say 15 guys in a row, the site cant be visited for like 5-8 minutes. Its locked up. I usually exterminate around 11am. The spam know this and largely sees when i am not logged in and then starts the nonsence. Id say on average 130 am-9am

[akreider2]

That is weird. I'm familiar with phpbb2.   I didn't bother banning people, I just didn't let them link to their website until they had posted.  Do you have email authentication on?  That helps.

Unfortunately the evil spammers employ real people. So even a good captcha will only get you so far.  Do you have one?

Captchas have been getting really hard to decipher recently, even if you are a real person.

On my blog I don't approve users unless they manually email me.  Depending on how much traffic you get, that might be less work.

[calvinhobbesliker]

Instead of captchas, just ask a simple math problem.

[Imperious Leader]

I figured they use humans to register. I notice some upswing in those i taunt, just to measure how they operate. They try again using proxy servers. I ban everything IP, Host, Name, email

This site does not have capabilities for capcha and eventually we are going over to a much better system. I would rather they cant even have any chance to load up anything in terms of a website, unless after a period of time and posts prove they are normal. For say default 100 posts all you can do is post in one place and extremely restricted ( no links, pics,websites) and just anything but AA related stuff, and latter they are approved and can post normally. Id also post specific hours that the site will even allow new memberships ( not at 1230 am-8am)

[calvinhobbesliker]

Id also post specific hours that the site will even allow new memberships ( not at 1230 am-8am)

Problem with this is that members are from all time zones.