I'd like to second Ran's comments. This is a great forum. A little help showing spammers the door is all that's required to make it better.
and adding a daily posting quota for a brief trial period
Do not want...
Spammers rarely post more than 15 a day and I have on quite a few occasions posted near or occasionally above that...
funny thing is, YOU can almost completely stop spam by hardly effecting the users, ... for example
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get moderators (im pretty disappointed that no one has responded to my pm about me volunteering)
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replace that dumb text footer with an image, change tags to remove all traces of yabb in plain text (including the darn header) these bots scan google for this exact forum system cause they know how to attack it, this site screams NOOBIE with a vulnerable system
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check user emails upon registration against a spam blacklist, like http://www.stopforumspam.com/
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clean up the mess, bots are looking for post's by other bots
All of these are transparent to the user, and you can stop the spamming almost instantly
All it takes is a bit of time and some effort
(im pretty disappointed that no one has responded to my pm about me volunteering)
Unfortunately I think that the current mods are pretty busy people so it may take them a bit of time to reply (and delete spam)...
Mowcius
;D
Have you ever wondered how many PM's mods get asking "hey, do you guys want another moderator?" or something of the sort? I'm guessing it's not ALOT.. but more than you'd expect. But I'm guessing they're on to ignoring those PM's, kind of like the people who PM for personal one on one help.. when it would be better to ask in the forum for all to see. 
And how exactly do they decide who's going to be a mod? Is it by suggestions only? How many posts they've made? How many RELEVANT posts they've made? Do we have a dance off?
Then, how you do you stop the children from complaining that they weren't given the chance to be a moderator, when in fact they "applied" months ago by PMing a random moderator expecting an answer?
But anyways.. onto the "spam", I think they're doing a good job. I can't remember if I read it in this post earlier.. or another post.. but I remember a moderator mentioning that they DIDN'T want to add a Captcha.. I think the one time sign-up is okay.. considering you can't post links on the first post. (keep them both!) I know it won't stop them all.. but it will limit some.. also the e-mail verification would be awesome. I wouldn't mind signing up with my e-mail address, as long as I don't get spam-o-la in my e-mail. 
I'm not sure how hard it would be.. but maybe for a new users first 10 posts, they can't post one after another within 1 minute. So make their first post.. then have to wait a minute to post a second. Etc. Until their first 10 posts are up.
But regardless of everything, I'm thankful for the time you guys put into these forums!
Have you ever wondered how many PM's mods get asking "hey, do you guys want another moderator?" or something of the sort? I'm guessing it's not ALOT.. but more than you'd expect.
I wouldn't have thought a lot (if any) before this was posted:
I'm willing to add moderators to help clean up spam, volunteers should just send me a PM on the forum. I will decide based on your track record on the forum. A good contributor will make a good mod I believe.
I'm sure that the if you are mod-worthy then the current mods will know your name from posts you have made. It doesn't take too long to get to know the good people :o
Mowcius
My only request is a thread subscription setup like most forums I am on (99% are vb) In most cases if I find info that I feel is interesting or may be needed in the future I like to easily be able to find it again.
And I dont like having a ton of forum threads in my firefox bookmarks folder.
I also agree with some of the other points made like making the forum look more professional like having arduino banners instead of yabb.
I have administered a few Vb and smf forums and would be up for the job of spammer hunter if needed altho my membership is still fairly new here. I would also be willing to help out with banner design if needed.
I really enjoy this board and it has quickly become my most frequently visited forum over all others I am a member of.
Cant wait to see some of the planned improvements the staff has in the works. 
the point of removing text references to yabb is not ascetics, its because its a big freaking neon blinking target for bout scout programs, just like any other forum software (lets not get confused here and think i am bashing yabb)
I fully understand the fact that its more than ascetics, but when I first came to the forum I was greatly confuzed as to if I was at the right place or not and how established the forum was from the looks of things.
It appears to new members as though the forum was just recently created and no work has gone into making it "feel" like an arduino community more than just a yabb forum promotion.
Having more visually pleasing features as well as maybe like a project of the month that could be voted upon could greatly improve people's intentions about being serious about the board I believe.
It appears to new members as though the forum was just recently created and no work has gone into making it "feel" like an arduino community more than just a yabb forum promotion.
Having more visually pleasing features as well as maybe like a project of the month that could be voted upon could greatly improve people's intentions about being serious about the board I believe.
I do agree with that mainly. I think that more mods would be brilliant in terms of all of this that could be done pretty quickly.
If people have the time and the knowledge then it should be easy. I think that it what a community like this one is all about 
We have had to ban several IPs coming from china that were cloning the whole website every day generating 20GB of bandwidth traffic every day... this has also required the installation of extra modules on the webserver to limit the amount of requests per second that any IP can make.
Soon we will have a chinese edition
Love the Yabb banner though - shows the real openness of the community to the extent that we don't even have an arduino banner.
Love the Yabb banner though - shows the real openness of the community to the extent that we don't even have an arduino banner.
;D
If someone has an idea on dimensions/size ill be happy to get started on some rough draft banners to post up for review and finalization
or should i just use the dimensions of the current yabb one?
Sometimes I got nothing better to do
using the same size as the one up there now would ensure the best compatibility with this theme
ALSO, when you post your creation can you make a new thread? maybe we can make this a community thing and it would be easier to deal with under its own topic (cause i might be trying my hand at this too)
My only request is a thread subscription setup like most forums I am on (99% are vb) In most cases if I find info that I feel is interesting or may be needed in the future I like to easily be able to find it again.
You mean like the "Notify of Replies" button at the bottom of each thread?
It's here
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Quote:
My only request is a thread subscription setup like most forums I am on (99% are vb) In most cases if I find info that I feel is interesting or may be needed in the future I like to easily be able to find it again.You mean like the "Notify of Replies" button at the bottom of each thread?
It's here
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No, I do not want a email every time someone posts in a thread i like. I simply want to be able to come back to them later in the future without having to search forever. Sort of like the add to favorites feature the site has which would work perfect if it did not have a 25 thread limit which i filled a little while ago.
If someone has an idea on dimensions/size ill be happy to get started on some rough draft banners to post up for review and finalization
man you seriously got something against the banner... lol... never realised it would have such an impact on someone interestingly i would like to ask the members
How many of you still keep noticing the banner? or its lack(hehe..)
For one thing, I stopped noticing it long time back.
well if you had read the thread its one of many targets for bots
Nothing really against it, Its just a lil off to me, I am on many boards, mostly automotive and engine management related, administering some as well and out of all of them this is the only one ive seen with the stock forum software setup.
Also it has been said of the spam bot attraction problems.
I am just offering my assistance because i really like this place (probably the most) of all the boards and thought id be cool if a few more eye friendly and easy to navigate functions were added.
Perhaps its time for a little banner contest? We were planning one before, at least talking about it, but no one ever submitted on, from what I remember... perhaps this time we can actually get it done?