So basically, we’re DOMED.
You maniac, Tom. You blew it all up.
I think a 48-hour initial freeze on voting would be an excellent start.
I am slightly worried about it without some sort of moderation staff.
I was pretty disheartened at how quickly this happened, so I’m working on a couple of stopgap measures. At any rate, please be aware that my priority is to make sure the tone of this place doesn’t change. Keep the suggestions and PMs coming, as well as any feedback.
-TomThis decision is motel art.
How did we go 40+ posts without a motel art joke?
I’d hit it…with lolcats!
Also, at least it won’t be boring around here for a bit or three.
Yay 2,3,4.
While we haven’t needed it to this point (because of the vetting and relative lack of issues), if you plan to allow instant registration, I recommend the mod route. There are plenty of regular users of the forum who could do it, and that way you can delete whole threads (rather than leaving them and editing them…they still take up space and are annoying if just the topic is still there) before anyone really even sees them.
I nominate all the people who seem to post within 30 seconds of a new thread being started.
Cool, I love spam, can’t get enough of it.
At our tiny, tiny forum we got hit by the spambots. Once they got in we went to a system much like Qt3 used to use, where one of the admins had to manually approve the account before they could post. We deleted all the spambot accounts since their profiles contained links to ads and we didn’t want to give them any help on Google.
After something like 2-3 months the wave of registrations has slacked off some. So just be aware that now some have gotten in, this forum is being circulated to more and more bots and it will be a long time before it starts to drop off their lists.
If only we could let in those posting lesbian porn and screen the others out. I mean, I would be offended and want them removed immediately, of course. Sorta like how the bastion of all that’s good and decent, Fox News, liberally covers naughty stories on their website to bring attention to the awfulness, of course, not because visitors of that site are closet pervs who like naughtiness like the rest of us.
And here I thought that I had finally made it through the vetting process after registering with the site in April '06, only to find that I’m a member of a horde new people given mass amnesty.
oh well. Longtime lurker, first time poster, love the site, etc. etc…
I would definitely recommend going back to a vetting process and letting a small pool of regulars handle the influx. I would also recommend deleting the spambot accounts instead of letting them sit around.
This is a bad idea. I would also recommend moderators. That’s not really enough, though, because you can’t moderate attitude to posting and maturity level. The stringent vetting was really special.
While you decide, just tell all the podcasters you know to stop mentioning qt3 on the air.
My crappy little no-traffic board was getting 50-100 spambot registrations a day. I’ve since added code so folks have to answer a question before they can register, which at least keeps out all the foreign automated spambots.
I can’t even imagine how many spammers will rush through the gates of Qt3 unimpeded. Good luck, sir.
Podcasts count as “on the air” now? I suppose /b/ is “journalism”.
Angie brings up a good point, the problem of spammers leeching pagerank was previously solved by making the profiles of not-yet-approved members inaccessible, but now that problem’s back, even for the spambots that never actually come back to post.
Okay, not “on the air.” “In the tubes.” Happy?
Hey, maybe Mr. Fed and I can continue to lob inane insults at each other now.
If you need help, I’m willing to help vet for you Tom. CC: to you of course.
Well, you’re just doing the jobs no one else will do, right?
Wrong! Send 'em back to Usenet and make 'em enter legally like everyone else, goddammit. We should build a firewall…
“STFU muttbunch!”
Oh. Yeah. Er, okay.