In answer to a couple of questions on a deleted spam thread, flagging posts sends me a message because it triggers a bug that crashes the database when you try to delete the thread.
Flaskbb is advanced but simple enough to work on, nice to use, adaptable, mostly reliable, and full of all sorts of weird edge-case behaviour, which is of course why it's eminently suitable for a Range Rover forum.
Now, I'm off to unwedge the database again ;-)
So no flagging then Gordon? Suggestions as to how we can eliminate these spammers welcome. They're a pet hate of mine
Now that I've fixed sending emails I'm going to require a registration email, and also most likely a captcha. Flagging spam is fine, it gives me more data points to try and track down what's going on with the database :-)
As moderator for the Bridgeport_Mill yahoo group I see very little spam. Almost 3,400 members. All very well behaved, years since I had to jump on something in a legitimate forum discussion. Did have to pull about a half a dozen spam messages last year which all appeared to come from hacked E-Mail addresses belonging to ex- or inactive members.
Requiring an E-Mail message containing relevant reason to join followed by holding the first post for moderator approval before conferring full membership privileges seems to be pretty effective at keeping the riff-raff out. I reject any empty joining requests with no message out of hand but usually ask those with a simple "Hello, can I join up" attached for more details. About half never reply but the returns from those that do can be amusing demonstrating that said hopeful oiks not only have no idea what a Bridgeport is but are too darn lazy to do the relevant research. Odd one or two are legit from folk who don't quite get how its done.
Clive
I've enabled reCaptcha on signup and login, which ought to keep the riff-raff out. On login if you've done one before it should just be a checkbox "I'm not a robot".
Could I ask a favour and get some of you to try logging in as new users in a "Private Browsing" window (CTRL-SHIFT-P in Firefox), prefixing the username you choose with "test-" so I can just make sure I haven't locked it down too much?
When I try and login with test-sloth, it just returns me to the login page - without -test, I get the recaptcha.
Ah, bloody idiot that I am, not "logging in", "creating users".
What about asking a question on registration about something that maybe only owners of a P38 would know, ie what is the left hand bottom corner relay for or something along those lines . Although its possible to google these it might deter those that cant be bothered.
If the standard of questions asked by some on the other site is anything to go by, asking them how many wheels it has would be too difficult for some......
That seems to be working fine. Registered as a new user, had to do the Captcha, got in.
riddlemethis wrote:
What about asking a question on registration about something that maybe only owners of a P38 would know, ie what is the left hand bottom corner relay for or something along those lines . Although its possible to google these it might deter those that cant be bothered.
I know there was one website - b3ta, maybe? - that required a simple literacy test involving things like "their, they're and there" and "could have/could of" type questions as part of the registration process :-D
While you are playing with it, how about setting the clock? It still thinks we are on BST so you sent the last post in 56 minutes time.....
Sort of a post Brexit residency application then?
:-)
gordonjcp wrote:
I know there was one website - b3ta, maybe? - that required a simple literacy test involving things like "their, they're and there" and "could have/could of" type questions as part of the registration process :-D
Aha, it thinks it's in Paris - pretty reasonable since the server farm is in Roubaix.
Replying here as it seems to have happened since a thread was deleted..
A few times now, certain sections have been rather convinced of new/unread material, despite marking everything as read. Currently Oily Bits is doing it for me, ever since a spam thread was removed. Happens across browsers and after clearing cache etc.
I've mentioned the Oily Bits unread thing to Gordon and he hasn't yet got to bottom of it due to its randomness
Ahh, poor show! boo hiss, etc ;)
It's a bit of a weird one, and I can't even reproduce it on a test server with an exact copy of the current database :-/
It looked to me like George posted in the dirty pollen filters thread and either deleted the post or it didn't save for some reason. It then showed that there were unread posts with one from George as the most recent but when you looked at the thread, there was no additional posts there, not from George or anyone. It's almost like there is an unread post but it is hidden so we can't read it so it remains unread.
Ah, now that might've been me. I deleted a post on that thread whilst I was fighting with google drive and pictures.