Registration Changes at Whateveresque
Posted on February 17, 2008 Posted by John Scalzi 10 Comments
Because of the immense number of attempted spambot sign-ups at Whateveresque, I’ve decided to change the way I do member registrations there. From now on, I will register people for memberships there on the 1st and 15th of each month, rather than on a rolling basis, as I had done.
This will accomplish two things. First, it will still allow people who actually want to be part of Whateveresque to sign up, and second, it will kill the nearly 100 attempted spam-bot sign-ups I get each day. I think everybody wins in that sort of scenario.
Don’t worry, I’ll announce open registration days here, so those of you who have not signed up yet will get reminders.
Dang it, I had (2) accounts at one time. I should have held out, I could have sold one…
I run 2 forums based on PHPBB. I’ve found that an additional question during registration eliminates 99% of spam registrations.
On one forum, I require a first and last name. It only checks that something is entered there, not what is entered. Still, I have never gotten a spam registration.
On another, I require people to answer a simple question (“What color is the sky”) and check that they enter “blue”. Once I did that, it completely eliminated my spam registration problem (a dozen or so a day).
Why is there always someone who has to pee in the pool? Spammers, telemarketers and missionaries all suck. If I want it I will find you. I will never and have never bought anything from an unsolicited sales pitch. I can barely stand sales people when I am looking to buy what they are selling. And don’t fool yourself, missionaries are sales people. (just got a warning from wordpress telling me to slow down no reply needed just an FYI)
Just to clarify–does that mean we can register whenever we like, but you’ll only go through the attempted registrations on those days? Or does it mean you’ll ignore all attempts to register except those that are made on the specified days?
I never got around to signing up–foolish me!
Andrew S:
Actually, a third option: It’s impossible to register except on those days.
Woo… up to nearly 100. ;) That’s fast popularity.
Does phpBB not support captcha? Before I enabled that on my IPB forum, I would get 2-3 spam reg’s a day (fortunately they all used a variation of 3 domains for email addresses so I could just shitcan them automatically) but it was still a pain. Since I put in captcha, I have had 1 successful spam reg (by an actual person) in the past year or two, and I don’t even see the failures.
It’s fun how this works. I didn’t previously care about creating a forum account, but now that I can’t, I really want to.
Yeah, seriously, it’s strange how that works.
I tried to sign up, but I must have been caught in the filter. I swear, I’m not a bot or spammer! I could get people to vouch for me, even! Real people!
Too bad though, ten more days until I can try again, and if miss that, another 15.
I look forward to joining your exclusive club though.