As said in the title. A lot of the time, when I look at the list of what each user is doing on the forums, I see a guest (and sometimes multiple guests) "registering for an account on the forums." However, we get no new users. I'm guessing that these are bots that are being repelled by the new forum design. Kudos to you, kamikaziplumber, for upgrading us and for curing the bot problem! Now we just have to see if Gamefreak has the ability to delete members. If so, just set the BotZapper 3000 to "all emails ending in '.ru'," and we'll be on our way.
:P You a racist against the Russian websites?
Even if the majority of them link you to pornography...
I don't think we have a single legitimate member whose email address ends in ".ru."
We could also delete all members with zero posts. If they want to come back, they can re-register. No big deal.
That's almost the entire forum. We'd only have like 400 members. :-*
Precisely. We'd be removing the bots and the non-posters and freeing up some bandwidth in the process. The legitimate members will remain here, and everyone is happy.
I see no reason why that isn't a wonderful idea.
Case in point: good idea, but we need more active members. I mean, jeez, only 12 kids post frequently. Or around that number...
I like the part about kudos for me. Let's talk about that s'more. ::)
But seriously, it's the Captcha. Built-in bot-reducer. And I believe that GF might have the power to delete accounts (you can actually choose to delete your own account, now) but, he might not be able to bulk-delete. I don't know, I could check on my test install I suppose. :-\
I can delete my account now?
AWESOME!
I've got to try that out now.
:P :P I like the updates and all, but really, we need more members. Badly.
We could always delete our account whenever we wanted to.
And MK, we're working on it. that's why we got the new software and everything.
We could delete our accounts before >.>?
Well, I don't know how to draw anymore people, besides regular updates and MORE STAFF UPDATES. (I'm talking to all my staff out there, get on it, pals!) More content? Don't we already have a topic for that?
EDIT:: GF can indeed delete bulk members, even by email address and other features.
Quote from: kamakaziplumber on July 29, 2008, 05:17:51 PMEDIT:: GF can indeed delete bulk members, even by email address and other features.
Perfect! When he returns, he can check that out for himself.
We're well on the way to a cleaner, bot-free forum!
I can mass ban now?!?
*Goes to do so*
You can definitely mass-delete members. Banning is another story, though I suppose it's also possible. Didn't check for that though.
Hey, the number of members is dropping! Gamefreak must be hard at work getting rid of the "wretched refuse," so to speak.
4,000 .ru accounts have just been deleted.
Any other e-mail blacklists?
Also, a little extra perk: All account registrations have to be handled by me personally now. So an account can't post unless I give the go-ahead.
Apparently not.
How about members with a grand total of zero posts?
I have my own personal reasons for that.
When I first registered, I didn't make any posts for about half a year.
So, a zero post account isn't grounds for immediate deletion to me.
Quote from: Gamefreak on July 29, 2008, 07:04:11 PMAlso, a little extra perk: All account registrations have to be handled by me personally now. So an account can't post unless I give the go-ahead.
Nope, not a good idea.
Bad Gamefreak.
Also, members with zero posts could still have posts in the Chatboard.
Well, my logic is this: If they've signed up and haven't posted anything, they're deleted. If they want to come back, they can re-register.
However, what about the people that have been here for more than a year and haven't made any posts? (Gamefreak should be able to see that they haven't made any posts on any part of the forums.)
I agree with Tacheon, as well, having to have administrator approval to start posting is bad. What if Gamefreak goes on leave for a month?
Well, it's not like that was my choice. It came with the upgrade.
Besides, this might be handy to handle any "old rashes" that decide to flare up again.
Sorry for the double post but I need to check something.
Twilight Wolf. Your idea might be possible, but I don't have any members I know of to research whether someone with posts in the chatboard would show up in a 0 post blanket ban.
Don't suppose anybody could help me out? Make a new account, make a test topic in the chatboard and we'll see how it goes.
What about that Deidara person? I don't recall him/her having posts in any board except Forum Games and the Chatboard.
Done and done, my freaky Freak.
"You are now registered with an account at TDC Forums, BOOBS!"
lol
As I said in the topic you made, you're silly, Tacheon.
Well, Tacheon's alt account showed up in the search for people with 0 posts.
Any thoughts on how to proceed?
Quote from: Gamefreak on July 29, 2008, 07:22:45 PM
Well, Tacheon's alt account showed up in the search for people with 0 posts.
Any thoughts on how to proceed?
Flip it over to attack it's weak spot?
We could look for more spambot names, then ban the emails/sites they come from.
I've noticed a bunch of spammers with email addresses ending in "@cashette.com."
All @cashette.com e-mails have been deleted.
Keep em coming. I can stay up for another couple hours.
Yes, sir. I'll report back with any new addresses I find.
EDIT: Here are more.
1onlinepharmacy4u.net
gawab.com
uacity.com
mymail-in.net
Ok, those two have been taken care of. I also did runs on drugs and swear words and stuff and got a few hundred of them as well.
We're under 10000 members now.
Sorry, Tacheon, but it looks like PORNOMOVIES may be one of the next to go.
Also, "elfox.net," "antimir.net" and email addresses ending in ".pl" and ".ua" seem to be spammers.
I think as a general rule, if it doesn't end in .com, then it's spammy...
Good job cleaning up the place, though.
I've got a big list of spammers for you, Gamefreak. Any email address ending with these are spambots:
4warding.com
atlantmail.com
atlaskit.com
babusya.com
bigmir.net
bluebottle.com
cvportal.net
fromru.com
gamebox.net
gmx.com
in.net
jetfix.ee
komatoz.net
lugarus.com
mail333.com
metaping.com
nmail24.com
peugeot-club.org
saratov.com
sdfg.com
terbuny.net
topmagic.org
ua.fm
uganska.net
ukrmail.org
vinbazar.com
zsdfg.com
Also, any email address ending with these are spambots as well.
.cn
.in
.ws
You just shattered my rule.
How do you know which ones are spammy anyway? I'd love to help out.
Things to look for:
1.) A very bizarre/jumbled-up username (such as "aaa18f84hg83")
2.) Any username or email address with the words "buy," "meds" (and other variations of the word, like "medication"), or the name of a drug in it.
3.) Any username or email address with swear words or sexual references.
That's how I nabbed a big list of 'em.
You just go to the members list and search for them, page by page?
Quote from: MasterKey08 on July 30, 2008, 06:48:12 PM
You just go to the members list and search for them, page by page?
Yes.
TW seriously has no life... he's perfect.
I'll come back with a lost of usernames, then....
Here's what I do.
1.) Go to the members list, and at the top, select the letter "A."
2.) Look for unusual/suspicious usernames, as I outlined in my previous post.
3.) Click on each suspicious username, and look at the email address. If it's from a website that isn't a familiar email provider, copy the domain name ("@whateverwebsite.whatever") portion of the address.
4.) Go back to the members list, go to the top, and click "search for members."
5.) Enter the copied portion of the address into the box, unselect "Search by name," and click "Search."
6.) If a full page of members or more shows up, and none of them look legitimate, it's most likely a spam website.
7.) Paste the copied portion of the email address into a text document for safekeeping and future reference.
8.) Repeat for several members beginning with the letter you selected at the beginning, then start over again at "B," and continue the process.
On second thought, I'd probably mess up, and it'd take so long I'd go crazy... so... maybe not...
It doesn't take that long, actually... Give it a try for yourself.
Thanks for all your help Twilight Wolf. There's no way I would have caught this many without you.
P.S: Vegeta!! What does the scouter say about deleted accounts?
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!!!
It's no problem, Gamefreak. I'm just happy to be able to help out the forums. I'll still keep digging for spammers, and hopefully, we'll have the forums clean and clear once again!
you know, to avoid deleting members that have only posted in forum games/chatboard, you can just make chatboard/forum games posts count temporarily, then search through all that have zero, then delete.
Where is the Members List? Or do you have to have special permission to use it?
At the... bottom of the page?
I dont see it...
Here, MajoraKirby. (http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/1919/21010365wc7.png)
Anyways, that's not a bad idea, JQ... In the meantime, however, I've got another list of spam addresses.
bimgir.net
bonbon.net
fene4ek.net
goldwarez.org
hotpop.com
imstations.com
izmail.net
kibermail.com
kinozal.tv
lvovs.com
mainru.com
pmrmail.com
pozitifff.com
rupr.org
stylebrand.com
sweetville.net
toughguy.net
uk2.net
ukr.net
unlimail.net
xsecurity.org
zadonsk.net
Also, email addresses ending in ".by" are spam.
Before I go through with JQ's plan, (Which should work by the way) are we in favor of deleting all accounts with a total of 0 posts?
I am in favor of this plan.
I say go for it.
I also say go for it (I of course, being the one who thought of it...)
Ok...Everyone get ready for some Post Count spiking
I'm prepared. I've been curious as to how many posts I really have...
Hmm...It seems that the:
Posts count towards total
option doesn't incorporate existing topics into our totals.
Well, back to square one, then, I suppose. Dang... Oh, well, I'll just keep digging for spammers. The problem is, though, there are a gigantic amount of spammers with Gmail accounts... this would have fixed the problem....
I had a hunch that that was the case.
Ah! Gamefreak, is it possible to delete members that have never been active? That would work!
I believe that there are email blacklists out there that have extensive lists of email domains that are known for being home to spammers/bots. Just upload that to the delete members queue and...
But like I said before, there are a gigantic number of spammers with Gmail accounts. If Gamefreak can delete members that have never been active, that'd solve everything.
He can't, ZV.
So? Delete the inactive gmail ones too.
Precisely, JQ. What I'm saying is, if possible, delete all of the members that have never been active. That means all of them. The active ones will never be touched.
I'll try running that through my search.
Well, let's keep our fingers crossed. This could be the solution we need.
One thing though, with the time set up we have here, 'time active', it's only since we got the forum update. And a lot of members with posts don"t have any time accrued because they haven't been back.
Well, I can't run "Never" through the Last Post criteria and get any results.
My only other option I can run through, is to bring up a list of all members. It brings up 30 at a time and I can uncheck all people who have posted at least once on these forums.
I'll have 135 pages of 30 people each to do, but this is the only thing I can think of.
Quote from: JQ Pickwick on July 31, 2008, 03:14:50 PM
One thing though, with the time set up we have here, 'time active', it's only since we got the forum update. And a lot of members with posts don"t have any time accrued because they haven't been back.
No, we're fine in that aspect. You all remember B-boy? He hasn't been around since January, and his profile says so.
EDIT: Dang, that's gonna take a while, Gamefreak...
Why is it that tons of the people with gibberish names have "Im a Llama" as their comment under their avatar?
That's the default with these forums.
I believe Jack has a topic near the bottom of announcements explaining it.
Quote from: Gamefreak on July 31, 2008, 03:15:37 PM
Well, I can't run "Never" through the Last Post criteria and get any results.
My only other option I can run through, is to bring up a list of all members. It brings up 30 at a time and I can uncheck all people who have posted at least once on these forums.
I'll have 135 pages of 30 people each to do, but this is the only thing I can think of.
Well, might as well do that. 135 pages can go by rather fast...
Or you could simply delete all members with zero posts and leave it at that.
But we'd have the problem of deleting members who have only posted in the Chatboard and Forum games... What if they came back? That wouldn't be good. When they try to sign in, it'd say something like "This account has been deleted." They might not come back again.
Right, I think I've got the criteria.
In the listing for all members, it shows a "Last Active" column. And if the person has never done anything, it'll show up as "Never"
That's just what we're looking for, methinks.
DELETE NAO!
Yes! It'll work. I looked up Tacheon's alt account for the test we did the other day, and even though he'll show up in a 0 post count search, in his "Last Active" column, it says "2 days ago".
Great success!
Let's attack these non-active members' weak spots for massive damage!
See you all in a couple hours.
Be prepared to see our member count drop back into the hundreds.
Hooray! This is a shining day in the history of The Desert Colossus.
See you in a couple of hours, Gamefreak. When you return, the forums will be almost like new!
yeah, hylianhero92 was telling me about a huge list of members, and that like half had zero posts
Heh..Actually, if I click on the "Last Active" column, it sort descending, starting with "Never" and ending with "Today"
I just sped up the process greatly.
Heh, keeps getting better and better, doesn't it?
We've already gotten rid of 2000 or so non-active members! Let's keep it up!
Just be sure not to delete any of the active members, K?
Dude, we've gotten rid of FAR more than 2000.
To date, we've gone from 14,000+ to 2000+.
I mean today, Tacheon. Silly man, didn't know what I meant...
EDIT: Wow, 600th post! Sweet!
Alright. All done.
I don't think anybody got caught in the crossfire in my first method.
Woah. I almost have as many PMs as there are members, now. :P
Now umm, did you revert chatboard and forum games back to being 'posts don't count towards total'?
Thank you, Gamefreak. If it weren't for you, we would never have gotten rid of these spambots/non-active users.
We should celebrate!
I wouldn't have gotten rid of most of them if weren't for your help Twilight Wolf.
And yes, the Chatboard has been reverted to its old rules.
Well, I'm happy to have been able to help out!
Also, is it just me, or do the forums load a bit faster now?
Could be. I'm sure I freed up a whole load of bandwith over the past few days.
I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. Deleting nearly around 14,000 bots and non-active members will probably be great for the forum's health.
It seems to be moving faster. But sometimes, for me at least, the banner at the top makes Firefox laggy.
But great job, Gamefreak! :D
I wish I could help with that 8) But I can't see how to filter people with slow connections into seeing the normal banner instead of the Flash one. Best thing you can do, if it's really bad, is to shut off Flash.
Sexy change to the banner, good idea.
Yeah, Rabies was having problems with his browser. So, this is the best way to fix the problem. Also, now the site won't slow for anyone at all... at least, because of the banner... unless they press play.
Aww, man. No one wants to press play again and again and again... especially to see an otherwise awesome banner :\
Rabies should just have flash turned off anyway and leave it at that. Flash has no business being on when you're on a dialup connection anyway.
I asked him about it, and from what I've heard, he can't, even if he wanted to.
Yeah, we tried. Apparently he can't... not without downloading the official uninstaller, at least. :-\ This is really the only solution... I mean, I suppose I could reverse it and have Rabies just hit pause when he needs to...
Can you change it to where you can turn the animation off completely? Until you decide to turn it back on, that is. If that's possible, that might work best, because if you reversed it, you'd have to turn it off every time you went to a different spot on the forums.
Not within the Flash. Even if I could turn off the animation, it would still start again every time he moved...
This guy obviously uses the craptastic internet explorer or (god forbid) AOL browser.
Read my lips rabies: You're internet is going to suck no matter what happens, but you might as well move on to the fastest browser out there: Firefox 3. and IDGRA about your dial-up excuses. No way should we have to sacrifice what's neat and usable by 99% of the populace because of your craptastic internet connection.
Put it back up KP, I believe Rabies mentioned something about visiting the site less and less somewhere around here.
Or... I could reverse it, and everyone would win? Then Rabies would just have to pause whenever he moves somewhere else. Maybe I could find a way to save something in your cookies, so that when you'd select whether it should play or not it would stay that way until you decided to change it... ah, but, I don't know how to do that, exactly. :-\
CHANGE IT BACK OR I'LL USE TACHEON'S MANWICH DUKE ON YOU
THERE. If Rabies gets mad at me, I'm blaming you guys. :'(
Way to step up to the plate there, KP.
Well, you know. I do what I do... when I do what I do.
OHHHH!!! I SEE HOW IT IS!!
I ASK THAT YOU TURN IT BACK ON FOR THE SAME REASONS AND YOU GET ALL PISSED OFF AT ME. BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! ONCE JQ ASKS ITS A CRYING FACE "OK".
... *grumbles* ...
Well guys, the little pause button doesn't work for me, and jq, firefox doesn't work well with dial up, my aol browser is much faster, i mean, it took me around 15 minutes just to get here and post.
The shiny new banner is meant to attract visitors.
If it's that much effort, get the uninstall thingy of flash working and just turn it off.
I like the new shiny banner. ;) It's cool how occasionally, a leever (is that what they are, or are they called something different?) and Link go by. And I just noticed today that you can pause it. :)
Well, the Pause button is new as of last night. Rabies... I don't see how the pause button can not work for you. It just doesn't make any sense. The best I can do is tell you to download the uninstaller. You can find it here (http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14157), with instructions on how to use it.
And ZV, you didn't threaten me with a manwich duke... whatever that is. >.>
Quote from: Vaati on August 04, 2008, 09:28:30 AM
I like the new shiny banner. ;) It's cool how occasionally, a leever (is that what they are, or are they called something different?) and Link go by. And I just noticed today that you can pause it. :)
That's an old school leever.
Quote from: kamakaziplumber on August 04, 2008, 09:38:52 AM
Well, the Pause button is new as of last night. Rabies... I don't see how the pause button can not work for you. It just doesn't make any sense. The best I can do is tell you to download the uninstaller. You can find it here (http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14157), with instructions on how to use it.
And ZV, you didn't threaten me with a manwich duke... whatever that is. >.>
It works fine for me.
I've yet to see the leever. And I use Firefox and I dont get any lag.
Quote from: Takun on August 04, 2008, 10:10:16 AM
I've yet to see the leever. And I use Firefox and I dont get any lag.
You have to watch it for a few seconds. It will run by the bottom of the screen from the left to the right.
I havnt seen link yet either. I guess I'll sit here for a minuet and watch.
EDIT! Ok, lol. I saw the leever.
Ahem.
THE PROBLEM HAS BEEN SOLVED. EVERYBODY WINS.
JQ, if you bother me about it again, I'll delete you from TDC. Don't make me do it. I'll do it!!!
Ok then. You win the site.
You bet I do!
I actually might be able to fix it so that Rabies will only have to hit it once, and it will save the state whenever he moves within the site. Will get on it now. :-\
If I could I would promote you to, " Godly King of all that is electrical" or something along those lines.