Shut It Down

[arpeejay]

This particular forum, that is. At this point it's just a spam trap. Maybe re-open it in six months?

Of course, I have no idea how easy or hard it is to shut it down but I think doing so would eliminate about 90% of the spam we've seen lately and right now spam seems to be running neck and neck with legitimate content.

xoxo

Richard

[kezzz]

I agree with Richard, it seems like there's more "spam advertisement" than the other ones...

Question though... how is it that the spam/spammers/spambots only get into here and not other forums?

I think if we/admin can work out the mechanism that the spammers gone through to get here and not anywhere else in the forums, then we could tackle that hole easily. Or even figure out the pattern of the content, and have a scripted, automatic clean up or quarantine procedure put in place.

[TeknoDave]

We are currently looking at our options. This thread does get used...what is happening is that these spam bots are looking for boards with off-topic threads, so we are exploring a way to circumvent them from "finding" ours.

I am also thinking that could be one of the causes of the board crashing periodically, but that is just a theory. I will run it by Flex the next time I see him online.

[arpeejay]

Thanks for the feedback, Dave. And, yes, I understand that the OTG forum gets used and that NOT having it would create other sorts of problems. I'm just inclined to think that decommissioning it for a while (and living with the inconvenience of having general topics posted to topic-specific forums) might give us some breathing space.

FWIW + THANKS for the good work you and Flex and the other moderators put in on Musclegrowth.org -- we're all very luck to have you guys taking care of it for us!

xoxo

Richard

[kezzz]

If the bots are looking for "off topic" then what if decommission this forum and create a new forum with something less generic name/title? simply renaming won't help as bots may have got hold of the forum id to go straight to the forum.

other thing is, implement a CAPTCHA : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha to post any reply, that will reduce most of the automated posting.

[TheMM]

Originally Posted by kezzz

If the bots are looking for "off topic" then what if decommission this forum and create a new forum with something less generic name/title? simply renaming won't help as bots may have got hold of the forum id to go straight to the forum.

other thing is, implement a CAPTCHA : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha to post any reply, that will reduce most of the automated posting.

As nice as that is, CAPTCHA doesn't really work anymore. It might help it for awhile (if at all of course) but other then that, eventually we would be right back where we were, if not worse.

Although renaming it sounds a lot better then just getting rid of it. I've had thoughts for a long time (before the spambots) of making this forum more "themed" to our subject here. Never wanted to tell Flex that since he is very busy and still has time to run this place, wouldn't want to put the burden of changing everything just to make it "look right."

[mann007]

I'm not sure how many people signs up every day, but if (not counting bots) they are not a lot maybe you could make all forums closed to members and allow members making them send and email or something, like in yahoo where the moderator has to let you in.

[TheMM]

...I love it! Thanks Flex, Tekno, and Optimusx!

Muscleaneous...I'm gonna be gigglin about that one for awhile.

[Flexedbicep020]

Originally Posted by TheMM

...I love it! Thanks Flex, Tekno, and Optimusx!

Muscleaneous...I'm gonna be gigglin about that one for awhile.

Wouldn't one of those captcha things or whatever they are called eliminate the spam bots?

[kezzz]

Originally Posted by Flexedbicep020

Wouldn't one of those captcha things or whatever they are called eliminate the spam bots?

Hehe... I did suggested that if you have followed the topic from the top :-)