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113 new members and its oly 7.59am
AndyW - 22/4/14 at 07:00 AM

What with the influx of "kitchen" spammers I looked at the member list and found 113 members registered today and its only 7.59 am

This site is being taken over by spam bots.

Surely there must be a way to stop this?

sdh2903 - 22/4/14 at 07:24 AM

Paid membership ?

Slimy38 - 22/4/14 at 07:42 AM

That's not good. I know that people say 'ignore them' but there's now two on the recent activity page, it won't be long before there's three, then four....

ReMan - 22/4/14 at 07:57 AM

quote:
Originally posted by sdh2903
Paid membership ?

Yep, should be, even just a couple of quid.
Would stop them dead, else if they did get through at least theres some revenue for the trouble

loggyboy - 22/4/14 at 08:58 AM

We could suggest admin approval forf each member but that could take a lot of work. Admin approval of initialbposts is another way. And we could also cull all members with a post count of zero. Or email them asking them to confirm they have a genuine interest.

NigeEss - 22/4/14 at 09:28 AM

I'd be happy with paid membership, even at a tenner It's value for money.

As for the approval route, most forums employ such a system, but as said, it involves valuable time, and
113 in a morning would take a fair bit of it

jossey - 22/4/14 at 09:58 AM

Even charge 10p will stop them

Or easier is do not let new users post a new topic until they have posted over 10 times and been a member for a week.

Plus put captcha on register page which I know I have mentioned before

That will solve it.

kingster996 - 22/4/14 at 10:25 AM

Problem is, the forum software used to run this site is well over 10yrs old and therefore very easy to hijack by anyone that fancies it. On top of that the moderators don't seem to care too much, so nothing gets done about these pesky Kitchen tosspots - who are probably paying some dodgy Search Engine Marketing "experts" to increase their traffic for peanuts.

Real shame, because this place has a wealth of knowledge and some decent folk contributing on a regular basis.

Just my 2p (paid my tenner too)

Irony - 22/4/14 at 12:12 PM

I am constantly shocked at the amount of 'guests' browsing. Surely there is something that could be done. I'd be happy with paid membership as well. £10 - £20 per year membership is peanuts compared to what I have saved by using this site. Also the friends I have made as well. There is a good culture on here of helping each other. I once Vinyled Up a Locosters Shop front and in return he took my girlfriend Microlighting!

scudderfish - 22/4/14 at 12:33 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Irony
I once Vinyled Up a Locosters Shop front and in return he took my girlfriend Microlighting!


That definitely sound euphemistic!

sdh2903 - 22/4/14 at 01:12 PM

quote:
Originally posted by scudderfish
quote:
Originally posted by Irony
I once Vinyled Up a Locosters Shop front and in return he took my girlfriend Microlighting!


That definitely sound euphemistic!


I had to read it twice

Irony - 22/4/14 at 02:10 PM

Just to clear things up.........

Description
Description

coozer - 22/4/14 at 02:12 PM

Just had a look and just under 300 registered yesterday (21st) and its over 200 today, looks like hundreds every day recently..

sdh2903 - 22/4/14 at 02:18 PM

quote:
Originally posted by coozer
Just had a look and just under 300 registered yesterday (21st) and its over 200 today, looks like hundreds every day recently..


Are there even that many kitchen companies in existence?

kingster996 - 22/4/14 at 02:48 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Irony
...Microlighting!

Ahh brings back memories:
Description
Description

kj - 22/4/14 at 03:27 PM

Lets all put a post on about how shite the kitchens are and the poor service

ChrisW - 22/4/14 at 04:23 PM

I've implemented a fix for this as follows:

1. Any user who has not verified their email address with 30 days of registration will be deleted.

2. Any user who after 30 days has not made any posts and has not visited the site again after 30 minutes had elapsed since their registration will be deleted.

3. Any user who registers and never views a single page (yes, these exist!) will be deleted after 24 hours

This runs at midnight every night and I hope will reduce the number of spam signups in the database. Running the scripts just now has reduced the membership count from ~75,000 to ~13,000.

Regards, Chris

loggyboy - 22/4/14 at 04:26 PM

Good stuff, thanks Chris.
If im reasing it right this wont stop the one off spammers will it? (kitchens etc)

NigeEss - 22/4/14 at 04:26 PM

Cheers Chris.

ChrisW - 22/4/14 at 04:41 PM

quote:
Originally posted by loggyboy
Good stuff, thanks Chris.
If im reasing it right this wont stop the one off spammers will it? (kitchens etc)


No, but I have something else up my sleeve for that! Might even get it deployed tonight, just off to a meeting so will depend on what time I get back.

Chris

twybrow - 22/4/14 at 06:43 PM

quote:
Originally posted by ChrisW
quote:
Originally posted by loggyboy
Good stuff, thanks Chris.
If im reasing it right this wont stop the one off spammers will it? (kitchens etc)


No, but I have something else up my sleeve for that! Might even get it deployed tonight, just off to a meeting so will depend on what time I get back.

Chris


Great to hear. Fingers crossed it does the job and thanks for acting on this.

samjc - 22/4/14 at 06:44 PM

Sounds good chris keep us updated.

ReMan - 22/4/14 at 06:49 PM

Excellent news Chris
Should rid of a minor annoyance and save you some disc spaceħ!

kingster996 - 23/4/14 at 08:12 AM

Good news, I humbly retract my earlier statement ref mods' attitude!

ChrisW - 23/4/14 at 05:58 PM

quote:
Originally posted by kingster996
Good news, I humbly retract my earlier statement ref mods' attitude!


Good to hear, you very nearly got a really shitty reply to that comment. To be fair, I am getting extremely fed up by the number of 'kitchen' posts I delete where someone has replied saying 'the admins don't care'. Really makes me think twice about bothering to clean up the mess.

kingster996 - 23/4/14 at 06:06 PM

Humble pie scoffed - won't 'appen again guv honest

ChrisW - 23/4/14 at 08:24 PM

quote:
Originally posted by kingster996
Humble pie scoffed - won't 'appen again guv honest


Don't worry, you're not the only one. Quite the opposite in fact!

Chris

kingster996 - 23/4/14 at 08:34 PM

So.... Can I be verified now

Chris

ChrisW - 23/4/14 at 08:39 PM

Hopefully the verification system will be back online in the next 24 hours. It will be mandatory for all new signups.

Those that are currently active members and not verified will be given a grace period, probably 14 days I guess.

Note that if you make a donation you are automatically verified due to Paypal passing your details over.

Chris

unijacko67 - 23/4/14 at 08:43 PM

It really does go without saying that every genuine member and regular user of this site massively appriciates the site and the work you do to keep it going Chris.

"A big thanks Chris" from me.

prawnabie - 23/4/14 at 08:59 PM

I chuckle reading these posts, every so often someone will throw their dummy out and have a rant about the admin, then when they make an appearance all the arse kissers come out of the woodwork!

I prefer the kitchen posts!

kingster996 - 23/4/14 at 10:04 PM

quote:
Originally posted by ChrisW
Hopefully the verification system will be back online in the next 24 hours. It will be mandatory for all new signups.

Those that are currently active members and not verified will be given a grace period, probably 14 days I guess.

Note that if you make a donation you are automatically verified due to Paypal passing your details over.

Chris
hmm, I donated some time back but still says unverified?

ChrisW - 23/4/14 at 10:24 PM

quote:
Originally posted by kingster996
quote:
Originally posted by ChrisW
Hopefully the verification system will be back online in the next 24 hours. It will be mandatory for all new signups.

Those that are currently active members and not verified will be given a grace period, probably 14 days I guess.

Note that if you make a donation you are automatically verified due to Paypal passing your details over.

Chris
hmm, I donated some time back but still says unverified?


That shouldn't be the case, but maybe the code to do it is broken.

Anyway, you can now verify here: http://locostbuilders.co.uk/account_verify.php

Chris

nick205 - 23/4/14 at 10:53 PM

Appreciated as always Chris.

Spooky - anyone else get the donation reminder pop up this morning?

£10 donation duly made

[Edited on 24/4/14 by nick205]

David Jenkins - 24/4/14 at 08:09 AM

I got it as well - and I've donated! I still consider it to be value for money.

I do sometimes grumble at some minor features that don't work properly - but then I remember the fact that Chris runs this largely on goodwill, so I shut up and be grateful.

Note: I hope that reminder will now go away following my payment...

Irony - 24/4/14 at 09:02 AM

quote:
Originally posted by prawnabie
I chuckle reading these posts, every so often someone will throw their dummy out and have a rant about the admin, then when they make an appearance all the arse kissers come out of the woodwork!

I prefer the kitchen posts!




As far as I am aware this website is run by one man for no profit in his own time. If a few people want to thank him for his good work then let them. If this website was subscription only and Chris made his living by just running Locostbuilders then good luck to him.

sdh2903 - 24/4/14 at 09:13 AM

quote:
Originally posted by prawnabie
I chuckle reading these posts, every so often someone will throw their dummy out and have a rant about the admin, then when they make an appearance all the arse kissers come out of the woodwork!

I prefer the kitchen posts!


I think everyone is grateful for the site and the effort Chris puts in, however there has been a growing feeling lately that Chris maybe needs a couple of Lieutenants to clear up the shite on a daily basis when he is busy. These requests for discussion have been largely ignored and not even openly discussed. I haven't reached the levels of throwing the dummy as you put it but have made my feelings known and mainly deleted. But at the end of the day it's Chris's site and I'm grateful he hasn't pulled the plug as I would never have got my car on the road without this site.

Re-donated, thanks for the reminder.

big_wasa - 24/4/14 at 09:53 AM

Bunged a tenner in the pot.

As above, if I could now get rid of the reminder ?

Cheers

[Edited on 24/4/14 by big_wasa]

loggyboy - 24/4/14 at 10:03 AM

I stuck a tenner in, time does in need fly, 3 years since my last donation!
The banner remained so I clicked the 'opt out' option and its gone now... hope theres no black mark against me name now!

DW100 - 24/4/14 at 11:16 AM

Verified my account by text this morning, Very easy

David Jenkins - 24/4/14 at 11:34 AM

I also clicked on the 'not now' button to get rid of the banner - I hope Chris isn't making a secret blacklist for future action...

ashg - 24/4/14 at 02:55 PM

Donated but the banner didn't go away. Chris Is it automated to disappear on payment or is that something manual you do?

I wonder how many would be prepared to pay a rolling £1 a month or £10 a year?

leon51274 - 24/4/14 at 03:24 PM

£10 in the pot from me!

kingster996 - 24/4/14 at 04:24 PM

quote:
Originally posted by ashg
I wonder how many would be prepared to pay a rolling £1 a month or £10 a year?

£10 a year is fine by me

[Edited on 24/4/14 by kingster996]

Slimy38 - 24/4/14 at 05:48 PM

quote:
Originally posted by kingster996
quote:
Originally posted by ashg
I wonder how many would be prepared to pay a rolling £1 a month or £10 a year?

£10 a year is fine by me

[Edited on 24/4/14 by kingster996]


Same here, to be honest I'd not realised it had been so long since I donated. I pay the same for my Yahoo mail, and to be honest I get much less value from that.

ReMan - 24/4/14 at 07:12 PM

paid up for another year

ceebmoj - 24/4/14 at 07:22 PM

Donation made, but the banner is still there. I don't want to disable the banner manually, because I don't mind donating annually and a reminder will make sure I do.

I would like to add I agree that A couple of other additional mods would be good as well.

ChrisW - 24/4/14 at 11:36 PM

quote:
Originally posted by ashg
Donated but the banner didn't go away. Chris Is it automated to disappear on payment or is that something manual you do?


It should go away automatically, but a few people have reported that it doesn't so I guess the code doesn't work properly. I will investigate over the next couple of days. For not just hit 'not now' - I'll write a quick script to erase that preference from those that have donated when I figure out why the banner isn't disappearing.

quote:
Originally posted by sdh2903
These requests for discussion have been largely ignored and not even openly discussed. I haven't reached the levels of throwing the dummy as you put it but have made my feelings known and mainly deleted.


I can assure you that very little gets deleted and I certainly don't think any discussion regarding mods has gone that way UNLESS they were comments made on an otherwise spam thread which there has been a lot of. I'm not going to mess around adding posts to make the discussion that follows make sense - if the first post is spam and everything else is just moaning about it the whole thread gets junked.

My opinion on mods is that I don't really want to go down that road unless I really can't avoid it, and this comes down to one simple reason: impartiality. I take great pride in this site being completely impartial, and I get it in the neck regularly with people wanting posts removed, "someone said something I don't like", "if you don't delete this I'll sue you" rubbish. I can't remember and exact number, but I bet if I could I could count on one hand the number of genuine, on-subject threads removed over the last 12+ years of running this site. Anyone that threatens to sue me over I tell to bring it on, and not one has taken up the challenge yet. I take a lot of stick for this sometimes, and often I'm not popular for it, but I stand by the site's impartiality, feel it is one of it's greatest assets, and in the long run, once the dust has settled on any rows, I truly believe the membership as a whole is intelligent enough to respect why I stick to my guns.

If I did take on a new mod I would have to trust them 100% that they would not be swayed by messages they will inevitably receive or the feeling of contempt they will get when they don't give in to the peer pressure and first of all not give in and delete or edit just to get people off their backs, but also not decide to give up on the job due to the aggravation. Trust me, if I can feel like throwing in the towel even after all these years of effort I'm sure others will!

I must also point out that the forum software currently has no 'soft delete' function. When a thread gets deleted, that's it. If I did have moderators I would have no idea what they had deleted, edited, etc and that's another reason that I need 100% trust in them as it will be me that has to clear up the mess, with no evidence of what actually happened, if a bad decision is made. Yes I could code that feature in, but surely my time is better spent on other things, an example of which follows.

As I see it, the main issue that people are calling for mods for is the spam posts that appear, and it is correct that due to the forum software being old it is not as well protected against spam bots as more modern packages. However this spam problem has only happened since the phone verification system stopped working. For those that were not around in those days it was put in place to stop the trolling that was going on a few years ago where people would sign up stupid usernames and wind up arguments. When my server was stolen by my previous employer I had backups of everything except the code that did the verification, hence when I got the site back online I had to do it without this feature. In the year that has passed since then the spam problem has steadily got worse. However I suspect I have now fixed this with the new, re-vamped phone verification system which, assuming it works, makes 95% of the reason for having mods go away.

On the subject of the forum software, I regularly read people criticising me for not updating it. Unfortunately they don't understand what has gone on over the last 13 years. I have made so many modifications to the code and database over the years, so many that I can't even remember half of them, that an upgrade would a massive undertaking. Things like the photo gallery, Sphinx search and the integration with Paypal, to give just three examples, would all need to be re-coded again from scratch. It's simply not feasible; I would be better off time-wise my own forum engine from scratch, which I would really like to do, but time simply doesn't permit at the moment.

I will be watching the situation over the next few weeks, and if the spam issue doesn't dramatically improve I have another idea up my sleeve to combat the problem. This would allow users to tag posts as spam, with the tag weighted by factors like how long both the author and the person reporting has been a member of the site, how many posts they have made, what 'spam' rating their other posts have received, etc. So for example it might take two well established people to report a newbie for spamming and have their thread automatically hidden, but it would take 100 newbies with say 10-100 posts and >30 days membership to automatically hide a well established member's post who has not had a previous post reported. I've not figured it all out yet, and I'm hoping I won't have to, but this is a route I would far rather go down as it means the community moderates itself and there can be nobody exercising overall power (apart from myself of course, but I strongly suspect that over the years I have demonstrated that I don't play games like that)

So there we have it. I didn't intend this to go on so long, but at least I've finally got around to putting out a statement about why I'm resisting taking on help. I do hope that you, as members, can understand my reasoning and agree that the site is better off overall if we keep to the existing structure, put protection from spam in place as far as possible, and if it turns out that any further moderation is required that I come up with a way of crowd sourcing this rather than electing individuals.

Cheers, Chris


[Edited on 24/4/2014 by ChrisW]

sdh2903 - 24/4/14 at 11:51 PM

Cheers for the reply Chris. The growing suggestions for mods were largely down to the growing kitchen tossers so if you've managed to eradicate them then great. From our perspective, we are aware that you run the site in your spare time and were suggesting moderators to ease the load so to speak. From your reply I can now see the added complexities and why you don't want to go down that route.

Steve

nick205 - 25/4/14 at 09:38 AM

Well presented Chris and a valuable insight into the mechanics and operation of the LCB forum.

I can see why you want to avoid involving moderators on the site. The weighted user self-moderating approach sounds interesting although the weighting itself needs careful consideration.

ceebmoj - 25/4/14 at 06:23 PM

You make some good points. However the spam tagging system requires that you implement a soft delete of threads (so that you can review and restore miss tagged threads), you could save your self some development time by just implementing the soft delete and allowing some moderators to perform the function. You would retain the final say on all moderation and it would save you some effort.

40inches - 25/4/14 at 06:48 PM

My twopence worth: While this is, at it's root, an automotive forum, over the years it has become much more than that.
This forum has become more of a social website inhabited, mostly, by even minded sensible people (eat your heart out Faceache).
I for one would put up with the occasional spam fest, as long as the forum keeps going. Done.

jossey - 25/4/14 at 08:23 PM

Chris thanks for working on a fix.


David

martin62 - 25/4/14 at 09:34 PM

Donated now thanks

threadbare wallet - 26/4/14 at 07:09 AM

Can i just confim the text thing is real and not some elaborate ruse by spammers(i know but i'm one of lifes pannicers) before i text me phone number.

Keep up the good work.

kingster996 - 26/4/14 at 07:44 AM

quote:
Originally posted by threadbare wallet
Can i just confim the text thing is real and not some elaborate ruse by spammers(i know but i'm one of lifes pannicers) before i text me phone number.

Keep up the good work.
yes it is real!

threadbare wallet - 26/4/14 at 07:48 AM

Cheers

ChrisW - 26/4/14 at 04:30 PM

quote:
Originally posted by loggyboy
I stuck a tenner in, time does in need fly, 3 years since my last donation!
The banner remained so I clicked the 'opt out' option and its gone now... hope theres no black mark against me name now!


I think I've fixed the problem that caused the banner to stay up after a contribution. Can anyone confirm please that it's gone without you pressing the 'no thanks' button?

Cheers, Chris

big_wasa - 26/4/14 at 04:46 PM

Yes sorted for me thanks