There's not much more we can do about the signups without potentially turning away legitimate users - perhaps a beyblade related question, but even then, those need to be changed regularly so the answer doesn't get added to the bot's code. There are addons that can prevent spam posts to a degree, which could be looked into, but in the end I think it's just going to be dedicated patrolling of the new members page or the like, especially as whoever is spamming us is already getting past Captcha, which means it's possible they're humans. Spammers are a reality of forums these days, sadly.

This is not correct. There aren't only text captcha, and also many of the anti spambot plugin just prevent registration of known spambot, however is real that some of them just create problem during registration. Usually in forum that I managed on MyBB I used these type of strategies and I haven't had a problem with the user registration. Today I sent a pm with all the info to Kai-V and Kei, hoping that they like what I shared with them so we can fix this little problem.

Admittedly, we are a few versions late in our upgrades, so there might be some vulnerability that was fixed later on. I have contacted our programer to schedule an upgrade from him though, since I always mess up something and I clearly have no time at all : I was planning on doing it during my week between two contracts in mid-February, but that went nowhere in the end.

Even though we don't have the latest 1.6.XX (if I remember correctly the latest is 1.6.12) version of MyBB, this has nothing to do with the spambot's visits. The development is proceeding slowly, particularly the road to 1.8 and subsequently 2.0, so for now I am not so worried about this question, however upgrade to the latest version is always the better choice for another million reasons.

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Look at my last post on this thread.

The post I've quoted says it was posted in 1970. :\

You can edit that dateline to make it say date you want...

From what I know, that isn't possible. Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's funny that you'd suggest that when The Bishop'd already changed the dateline of your post in his quote.

FYI, the dateline thing is based on Unix time.


EDIT: Okay, after reviewing both your quote and bladeryBoB66's post, you apparently deleted the last two digits and the closing apostrophe of the quote's dateline, sending the quote back in time a few decades.

[quote='bladeryBoB66' pid='1201764' dateline='13950216] (Your post's code)

[quote='bladeryBoB66' pid='1201764' dateline='1395021678'] (Correct code)


Lesson to be learned: be more attentive to what you're deleting in the future (and past). lol

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Spoiler (Click to View)

This is what we all want, Brad.

There's not much more we can do about the signups without potentially turning away legitimate users - perhaps a beyblade related question, but even then, those need to be changed regularly so the answer doesn't get added to the bot's code. There are addons that can prevent spam posts to a degree, which could be looked into, but in the end I think it's just going to be dedicated patrolling of the new members page or the like, especially as whoever is spamming us is already getting past Captcha, which means it's possible they're humans. Spammers are a reality of forums these days, sadly.

This is not correct. There aren't only text captcha, and also many of the anti spambot plugin just prevent registration of known spambot, however is real that some of them just create problem during registration. Usually in forum that I managed on MyBB I used these type of strategies and I haven't had a problem with the user registration. Today I sent a pm with all the info to Kai-V and Kei, hoping that they like what I shared with them so we can fix this little problem.

How do you know that legitimate users aren't being turned away, though? Not all of them will send a help request, after all, and the audience of your forum is also relevant. My post was based on doing a fair bit of reading about it in MyBB's webmaster forums or whatever, and that seemed to be the general opinion - a minority said these measures caused no trouble, but were quickly responded to with basically what I've said.

Certain aspects of our problem also make me suspect that at least a portion of the spam we're dealing with is coming from actual people - other MyBB webmasters mentioned it, and we're one of the largest MyBB forums, so it wouldn't surprise me. Of course, I can only see publicly visible things in the timeframe during which I am online, so it's hard to tell really.

Still, I'm being unnecessarily negative here - I'm sure the staff can assess your suggestions themselves.

However, I did come across another plugin, one that doesn't prevent registration but instead prevents spammy posts - it's focussed on not preventing legitimate posts and so on, allowing people to go back and alter their post to fix it up, so it's a bit on the lenient side but most of our spammers would fall into it quite easily. I'm not sure if it keeps a log of blocked posts (one would hope so) and it won't do much about the registration but it seems like something that would be very appropriate for our situation. Main downside is of course the inevitable slightly longer processing time for posts/edits, though even as someone who occasionally must rely on incredibly shoddy mobile internet, it doesn't sound like a big imposition from what I read. I can dig it up again if staff are interested.


@Angryface: Oh, thanks for the Unix Time thing. When quoting posts from closed threads to make them look right, I had to find similarly timed posts and copy it. That makes things much easier.

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th!nkBlargh|H-Code Product List

th!nk, surely what you said now is almost ok, but a plugin that 'prevent spam posts' like you said simply doesn't exists, what you are thinking of could be something like a plugin that just auto-remove/auto-move only post with link (or certain link) from certain sub-forum, so from what is my experience I can tell that it is the worst way to ride 'cause it will surely creates many troubles to the users.

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Unless I was hallucinating, something along the lines of what I described exists. I'll dig it up later, bit busy at the moment. IIRC it blocks posts/edits that it identifies as spam, with a reasonably detailed way of making that determination. Would imagine that it is something along the lines of the error you get when you make a post with no content, or send a PM without a subject or the like. Not sure how it interacts with quick edit, but it seemed reasonably popular and certainly sounded feasible to me.

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th!nkBlargh|H-Code Product List

Unless I was hallucinating, something along the lines of what I described exists. I'll dig it up later, bit busy at the moment. IIRC it blocks posts/edits that it identifies as spam, with a reasonably detailed way of making that determination. Would imagine that it is something along the lines of the error you get when you make a post with no content, or send a PM without a subject or the like. Not sure how it interacts with quick edit, but it seemed reasonably popular and certainly sounded feasible to me.

Well, if something like this is ready for use or is still in development and you have good news about this let me know, I'm quite interested about it, and we also have to talk about this to the committee. Unfortunately from what you've told now it is pretty like I've described before and it probably creates problem when posting to many users, but if I'm wrong I will be happy to admit it
P.S.

Spoiler (Click to View)

However I think that we are going a little bit OT, it's better if we continue to talk via pm if you have news

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Seeing as I said I'd post it here (and honestly I don't think it'd be too harmful for you to reply to it with your thoughts here either) - this is the plugin I was talking about. Quite configurable it seems: http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthread.php?tid=1006

It looks a bit work in progress-ish in that initial post but I don't think that's been updated that recently, and I've read a lot of good things about it.

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th!nkBlargh|H-Code Product List

Seeing as I said I'd post it here (and honestly I don't think it'd be too harmful for you to reply to it with your thoughts here either) - this is the plugin I was talking about. Quite configurable it seems: http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthread.php?tid=1006

It looks a bit work in progress-ish in that initial post but I don't think that's been updated that recently, and I've read a lot of good things about it.

I don't know why you are so indelicate with words, I just expressed my opinion, aren't forum born for this reason? However...I already know it, I used to use some plugin from here. Have you read the source or, at least, accurately read the description of what the plugin do? I'm not so sure about this.

How it works (Click to View)

"How does this plugin work?
When a user tries to post a new thread or reply, or edit a post, the plugin will check whether the user passes a number of thresholds (such as post count) and if so, deems the user "safe" and stops there.
If the user fails to pass the threshold test, the main Spamalyser engine kicks in and analyses the post to determine a "spam weighting" (likeliness of it being spam). It then compares this weighting against some configurable action thresholds to decide on whether it should do anything to the post. If the weighting meets the thresholds, Spamalyser can currently (depending on what you enable):

Report the post,
Unapprove the post, or
Block the post (displays an error when user tries to submit the post)

All weighting calculations are logged and can be viewed via ACP -> Tools -> Spamalyser Log

How is the "spam weighting" calculated?
Quite a number of means, but most of the code is link analysis. Spammers ultimately want to post links, so it seems like a good place to start. Every link posted will add to the weighting, and links with similar keywords or to the same domain get penalised more heavily.
Spamalyser can also make some judgements based on the poster's online time and other factors, and has a number of features to attempt to reduce the number of false positives (for example, by examining the user's previous posts).
External lookups to services such as Stop Forum Spam and Akismet are also supported, and you can specify the amount of weighting to give to these services.

You can try looking in the Spamalyser settings which show all the methods used by this plugin to detect spam."

If you read carefully you will see that it, briefly, do what I've said in the posts before, it scan every post (I think that you can also choose in wich sub-forums it works), than it analyzes links, than you have the choice: Report the post, Unapprove the post, Block the post, but I am going to come back on this later.
"spam weighting" -> "Spammers ultimately want to post links, so it seems like a good place to start. Every link posted will add to the weighting, and links with similar keywords or to the same domain get penalised more heavily." Ok, this can be useful, but anyway it can create problems when an user posts. "Spamalyser can also make some judgements based on the poster's online time and other factors, and has a number of features to attempt to reduce the number of false positives (for example, by examining the user's previous posts)." So, what about the false positives, mh? "External lookups to services such as Stop Forum Spam and Akismet are also supported, and you can specify the amount of weighting to give to these services." With this I'm happy, this is a great function, and it can reduce dramatically the false positives, but before we can exult we have to persuade the committee to use that two plugin, one of which I have already suggested to Kai-V.

I conclude with:

Limitations

-The plugin assumes that MyCode is always enabled (so only detects [url] type links), which is probably in-line with the assumptions made by most spammers
-Google searching behaviour is somewhat erratic - it's a bit difficult to generate a representative search query from a post. Can be tweaked, though I'm not too worried because spammers can theoretically bypass this by slightly varying their posts across forums
-Reports currently only go to the database regardless of what reporting medium you have selected

...where no explanations are necessary.

So, basically, what it does:

Report the post -> Quite useless and annoying, isn't it?

Unapprove the post -> Quite annoying if it happens to an user instead of a bot, isn't it?

Block the post -> Very quite annoying if it happens to an user instead of a bot, isn't it?


So, IMHO this plugin is quite good at what it does, but I'm not at all sure that it is what WBO needs, at least it is quite useless and annoying alone. However, the committee can test it and and assess whether it is worth using it (because it could be worth it if used correctly, but only if false positives can be reduced to zero... meh, quite impossible but we can always try, as long as that does not cause inconvenience to users. We have a lot of users but if they encounter problems they could always decide to leave).

th!nk, we are a community, and we have to give our best for the progress of the community, because if it benefits the community it benefits us all, remember this next time before posting annoying phrases with appearances offensive like "and honestly I don't think it'd be too harmful for you to reply to it with your thoughts here either", everyone is free to express their thoughts. I personally have been very polite and cooperative with you, so I just do not understand why you were so rude. Anyway thanks for listening to me (well, for reading me)

EDIT: I misunderstood what th!nk wanted to say with "and honestly I don't think it'd be too harmful for you to reply to it with your thoughts here either", everything is ok!

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I don't know why you are so indelicate with words, I just expressed my opinion, aren't forum born for this reason? However...I already know it, I used to use some plugin from here. Have you read the source or, at least, accurately read the description of what the plugin do? I'm not so sure about this.

th!nk, we are a community, and we have to give our best for the progress of the community, because if it benefits the community it benefits us all, remember this next time before posting annoying phrases with appearances offensive like "and honestly I don't think it'd be too harmful for you to reply to it with your thoughts here either", everyone is free to express their thoughts. I personally have been very polite and cooperative with you, so I just do not understand why you were so rude. Anyway thanks for listening to me (well, for reading me)

What th!nk said doesn't seem to be offensive at all. Maybe you misinterpreted what he said ...

blah, this could also be as you say, so if I misinterpreted what he wanted to say me I will definitely try to clarify this through PM and apologize, because, as I said, we are all here to improve the WBO together, not to declare who has the right to speak and who's not

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Uh, I'm not sure what you're reading into that, I was just trying to say it would be fine for you to reply here (in response to you saying we should carry the conversation on in private), as your insight is better off being publicly visible and I don't think we're going too far off the topic here given a lot of discussion has taken place.

Anyway, I was definitely thinking of the 'block' function when talking about it - if it blocks a legitimate post - after all of its checks, because according to what I read, the user can simply go back and edit what they had and try again - it's not exactly a big inconvenience, unless it is particularly bad about false positives - and I didn't read much in the way of complaints about that, so I assume it works fine.

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th!nkBlargh|H-Code Product List

Uh, I'm not sure what you're reading into that, I was just trying to say it would be fine for you to reply here (in response to you saying we should carry the conversation on in private), as your insight is better off being publicly visible and I don't think we're going too far off the topic here given a lot of discussion has taken place.

Anyway, I was definitely thinking of the 'block' function when talking about it - if it blocks a legitimate post - after all of its checks, because according to what I read, the user can simply go back and edit what they had and try again - it's not exactly a big inconvenience, unless it is particularly bad about false positives - and I didn't read much in the way of complaints about that, so I assume it works fine.

Oh well, so I have to apology with you and the other guys that have read, I understand from what you previously said that I can't talk lol Unfortunately language misunderstanding could happen hah sorry for the little drawback

Block -> It could be tricky when you try to change what you've wrote and then you can't be able to post anyway, however we need deep test. You have also to add what I said before, so this is going to be much more complicated.

Well, about this we have to take a try, if you agree 'cause you're interested about this cooperation, and the committee agree, we can try on a test board, studying how it works deeply, and let know the committee about the results with proof

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Connecticon-Clave II should be listed as July, not June 12

Under our BeyBattle Record why doesn't it say our rank?

Under our BeyBattle Record why doesn't it say our rank?

I tried adding it, but it seems there is really no way to add it in the profile ...

How about a way to search users in the beypoint system?

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still posi

How about a way to search users in the beypoint system?

Yes I support that since it is hard to find usernames under rank 200 or so.

Sorry to revive this thread out of absolutely nowhere, though I found something quite interesting, though I don't know whether or whether not this has already been discussed:

Anyways, when one goes to their User CP, they get a blue/grey box listing ones last five threads. There are five sections in that box. They consist of the Thread, Forum, Replies, Views, and the Last Poster, which I'll be focusing on.

Anyways, when clicking on the link to the last poster's profile, you get linked to a different user's profile. For example, here's what I've been getting:

• When clicking on Lord's profile, I get linked to Neo's.
  
• When clicking on Kai-V's profile, I get linked to Echizen's.
  
• When clicking on Tʀɪ's profile, I get linked to Kai-V's.
  
• When clicking on Cannon's profile, I once again get linked to Kai-V's.
  
• When clicking on ULTIMATE BLAZE's profile, I get linked to Leone19's.

Is this happening to anyone else, as well?

Wow. Just noticed.

When I click on |BeyBouncer| it goes to *Ginga*, when I click on Flambo. It goes to Neo, but Kai-V works fine.

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Signature credit to Leet.o

Spoiler (Click to View)

Threads you should read:

Pony King ? God, can't believe I typed this. I have to put my keyboard in the dishwasher now...

dude are you a gangster

LOL did you asked Midnight to take that pic?

When a monochrome picture is posted on WBO, it doesn't mean that it's always from Midnight.

I wouldn't trust someone with that many Cancer faces.

Well damn.

@[The Supreme One] Soul Baez V145AS

There's nothing else really to do or say except wait for the Superbowl, but I'm only here so I don't get fined.



Time. *gets up and leaves*

We won't have tournaments in the winter. Cause we are not one of those Canadian people where they just go outside like nothing happened to their hands.

i like my coffee like i like my men B)



i don't like coffee

I never have.

*Ginga*.. you're drunk bro... go home.. : )

Tbh SGMS & BDMS are kinda worthless.
MSUV is a far better spent investment; DGMF is even better IMO.

Um what? You're just saying that because you're a dragoon fanboy...

Why would I be suspended????

HMS summarised:




Anything not Tornado Type S:  Wolborg will leave you #rekt




Otherwise:  Go crazy with Ultimate Grip Flat 




For something less cookie-cutter:  Jiraiya sure is sexy

Is Wolborg 2 useless for competitive play?

Extremely useless. 
Now, if you come upon one I'll just PM you my address so you can throw it away. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I wasn't looking for Beyblade Underwear, I swear

Same thing. Whenever I click on Shining Dog MS, I get linked to Wombat.

Strange.

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Honestly, I say leave it be. I think it is a cool guessing game, haha.

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still posi

I just tried several recount tasks and nothing changed ... It is odd, because it is not listing the thread creator instead or something confused like that.

It's been happening for a while for me, but I thought it was just a small error and never mentioned it.

A while back in the off topic general discussion thread I tried to make a 4th of july topic but it would never show. And a couple weeks ago I was commenting on beybrad's food thread and my post suddenly was deleted!

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Train,When battling be vicious!


All my life I had a strong love for dragons,but when I met beyblade I found the right dragon for me...But tell me what is a dragon?A huge crazy lizard like fire breathing monster? To me a dragon is a symbol of strength power,dominance.