Just a quick post here to find out how others are finding the SPAM issue here on the forum? Do you think it is time for an alternative format, like a free ProBoards account, be found to add extra security and data management abilities?
The most recent incident was particularly distressing, since it resulted in the corruption of the chronological relevance of our posts: all threads were reset to indicate the date of the spamming incident.
I think its time we moved to a mandatory sign-in style forum, and ProBoards looks like a good alternative. Undoubtedly there are many excellent options. I feel strongly that this spamming problem needs to be resolved.
Paul Barden
Here here!
Spamming here causes a huge waste of time your end, and our end sorting through posts to find chronologically relevant postings.
On a slight tangent, but a somewhat similar issue… I also have had “email abuse”, not only from spammers! Email addresses posted on the forum should be used to communicate meaningful information, in a respectful manner!
George,
Are the email addresses currently working? I had given up on using them since they never seemed to be working though I do know they were temporarily turned off after the recent spam. Agree the break in chronology is a problem-I felt the same way but said nothing.
Jim
I just got used to it a year or so ago. Sometimes its useful because it refreshes my memory, but it is equally disruptive, too.
Jim, I honestly don’t know. Nice to hear from you, take care.
Having managed some PHPBB and similar boards, and having constantly fought spammers on them, I think that most of what you’d get from changing platforms would be the option to add a CAPTCHA module. But, if someone wants to add about 10 lines of code to this board, CAPTCHA could be implemented on the existing platform, which might be an easier and less traumatic option overall.
One example of free code to do the job can be found at phpcaptcha, but there are probably others.
Link: www.phpcaptcha.org
After I stopped the spammer, I returned all of the threads on the first page to their correct chronological order. The dates were updated, but they were in order from newest to oldest based on the most recent legitimate post.
No one contacted me to tell me about the spam. If I had known about it sooner, I would have done something about it sooner. If you see spam or any other problem on the forum, please contact me immediately. Most of you have my email address. For those of you who don’t, it is nyponen (at) gmail.com (replace the (at) with @). Complaining about spam after it has been cleaned up does not help. Reporting spam when it is happening does help.
The email function has been disabled from time to time by our ISP when someone reported spam email to our ISP instead of reporting it to me. If you get a spam email via the RHA Forum, please report it immediately to me, not to our ISP.
There is currently no way to convert the existing forum messages to ProBoards. Switching to another platform would mean losing the 35,761 messages that have been posted on this forum since it began in 2002. I like the idea of adding a CAPTCHA better than converting to a new platform. It would stop spambots, and would make spamming more difficult for human spammers.
Hi Jim,
Just because the subject’s come up… I wanted to take a minute to thank you for all of your time and effort behind the scenes. I very much appreciate the RHA forum in whatever form you are able to provide it. It’s easy to take this for granted when everything’s working seamlessly. I guess the frustrations that were expressed are an indication of how valued the forum really is.
Thanks again, Tom
Hi Jim,
Tom beat me to it but as I read this thread and your posts, I thought there is a lot of work involved in moderating this thread and keeping the darn spammers out. Thank you for all you do for us to keep this forum running as we teach each other and learn from each other and have our little family squabbles now and then-none of this could exist if it weren’t for you and your continuous attention to the forum.
Thank you so much,
Jim Provenzano
Jim,
You mistkae complaining about spam after it has been removed with opening a discourse among RHA members to discuss other alternatives and the pros and cons of doing so to address a range of issues. You are well aware of my personal feelings as you deleted them at the same time as you deleted the spam and so in the interest of being less antagonistic and more constructive I have chosen to open said discourse to gauge the level of care about this issue among other RHA members.
I have been doing online forums for about 20 years now as well and the CAPTHCA module would only serve to add a level of inconvenience to the spammers should they want to post. It does nothing to address other security issues such as protecting our personal inforamtion or add a level of data management here that would allow us to organise the data more logically in something other than chronological order. I founded and ran rosetalkaustralia.com for years and we do not have spam issues there as I took measures to ensure that permissions are set correctly and that I vetted new members to ensure they are infact human and not some kind of bot. All freemail addresses, such as hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc are routinely questioned and if they reply they are human. Bots don’t reply. People are understanding of this and appreciate your attempts to ensure their online safety.
These are some of the issues as I see them. There are probably others that I have not thought of:
Security:
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By placing our emails in the email field we open ourselves up to spammers at our home email addresses. It has happened to me twice. Once I infomred you and you blocked the spammer. This did not stop the spammer from pestering me and I installed an email filter here to intercept the spammer because they already had my home email address. There are many work arounds, I know, such as using hotmail accounts etc, however, I don’t like being told to use work arounds when it would be relatively easy to improve security and so avoid such issues in the first place. RHA is an association and associations are designed to bring like-minded people toegther and encourage communication between members. Not being able to do so here for fear of being targetted by spammers and having the on-again off-again email function discourages interaction between members. A private messaging system would essentially eliminate this. People could communicate offline via private messaging or may choose to share email addresses privately to add an extra level of security.
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When we are hit with a serving of spam possibly dangerous, in an online sense, websites may be linked to that could further put people here at risk if they were to click through on them.
Data Management:
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As has been mentioned, chronology is messed up when spammers hit requiring significant intervention from you.
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There is significant time and effort required from you to manage the spam here and deal with resorting the affected threads. Going to one of these other platforms would make this easier and even allow moderators to help manage this to reduce your workload. I have refrained from contacting you in the past about spam because I was told that you had a fairly extreme workload and knowing how it feels to be under the pump all the time I didn’t want to burden you with it.
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Information is hard to find here once it disappears from the first few pages. A platform that allows information to be categorised in some way would make this an easier task. For instance, I am always trying to find the abstracts that Henry links to and have a difficult time of it. A section related to something such as ‘Journal Articles’ might help to sort it out. I would appreciate a section where I could interact with people socially as well without fear of being out of place amidst all the other on-topic traffic.
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There is no real need to worry about losing all the data we already have here. All you would need to do is turn off posting and retain the data you have here so that it is still searcheable and link to it from the main website as the RHA Forum archive and then start from scratch. It won’t take long to build up a new and substantial bank of data. For example Rosetalk Australia clocked has clocked up 11,922 messages in just three years. Message here seem to accrue at a similar or higher rate.
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It just looks plain BAD to have spam appear. As you said, if you don’t notice it yourself, someone has to tell you it’s here. It can stay for a while before it is dealt with. This looks bad and deters others from posting here because it sends a bad message.
Services:
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At present my membership fees help to keep the website up and running and keep the articles on it freely available. I do not, however, need to be a financial member to view the forum. Some might argue that this is the way it should be, however, I am not so sure. It wouldn’t hurt to have a least some parts that are privy to RHA members only. At the very least you can set the permissions of a phpBB based discussion board so that guests are able to view the content but are unable to post. This is how I set up Rosetalk Australia.
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Do we have an RSS feed here? If not you do with a lot of other platforms and this will allow us to tap into other social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Love them or hate them I was amazed at how many people were interested in tapping into Rosetalk Australia’s Facebook site and who follow our posts. I no longer run Rosetalk Australia because I need a break, but I still maintain it and it never ceases to amaze me at how many people keep tabs on our comings and goings through Facebook. By using a ‘go-between’ such as hootsuite.com you can integrate both FB and Twitter with your RSS feed and in doing so reach a whole new audience.
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Modules such as calenders and chat modules can be installed to provide members with additional ways to interact.
So, please don’t think this is a complaining session about spam after it has been cleaned up. It is not. If RHA had more frequent meetings I would, as a financial member of RHA, contact John Moe directly and ask to have it formerly put on the agenda to discuss. As this is not a viable option, the forum is the paltform through which other financial members are able to communicate with the RHA executive. If there was a different platform available a section could be created to deal with RHA matters separately, however, this does not exist so this is the best way to initiate discussion amongst other members. If people don’t feel the need to explore other alternatives then no one will say anything. As a member of RHA I would like to think that my views would be duely discussed rationally as well, without anyone thinking that I was ungrateful, which I am not, or having a dig at anyone specifically, which I am also not.
Hi Jim T.
I have to join with Tom and Jim P in thanking you for your efforts to keep the forum in order.
Simon, your post at the time that the spam was occurring was exactly what the spammer wanted, recognition. After your post, the amount of spam went up dramatically. Stop encouraging the spammer and do something to stop it, i.e., notify me when you see it.
Jim,
I might conceivably be able to help, since LAMP/“Web 2.0” security is my day job, and I even know my way around Hurricane Electric. Please email me if you like.
Hardy, thank you for your offer of help. I will probably be contacting you as there seems to be a php issue at Hurricane Electric that prevents me from using the securimage captcha.
Jim, This is NOT true. When I replied there was more than a page of spam. I object to your insunation and I also object to your attitude to the forum. Thanks for turning me off… permanently.
Have a nice life.
Someone, please end further discussion on this thread… heads for the aspirin, yet again
Jim apologies from OZ
OK gang - enuf of this thread. Let it end now! I know Jim is doing what he can to make this forum a special place where we can share ideas and converse with friends and colleagues. Lets keep it this way.
Thanks Jim,
John Moe
General Director
As to above: Amen