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[discussion] The captcha thing in this forum

Started by mhubuntu, December 27, 2012, 08:51:21 PM

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mhubuntu

Hi everyone,

I registered 10 minutes ago to this forum to submit a patch.
The first thing I thought was "Oh no, not another registration". Okay, then I saw, that you can log in via OpenID which was a plus point for you, but you destroyed it immediately. I have to register even with OpenID? WTF? This is the biggest crap I've ever seen. Sorry, but then you won't need OpenID. I tried then to register with my OpenID, but that won't work. You can try it on your own.
Next thing, these "captchas" you use in this forum are some big pain in the "hinterteil". The images can't be read, if you click on "get a new one" you will jump to the top of the page, which is annoying too. The next questions will be the same every time, so why do you ask them.
****! I hope you will change something about this. (You censor da mn? That's silly ;) )

prissi

#1
Unfourtunately with easier capcha we got much much more spambots. Unfourtunately OpenID is not really preventing this too.

VS

Errrm... First, as an "admin", I am sorry for all the inconvenience.

Second, we can't really help much of that. This forum, it's just an installation of software, and we "admins" are just users - not an almighty IT department that could solve your complaints. Dealing with all the plumbing is consequence of need for infrastructure, not by choice or delegation. We have busy lives, and in our free time try to work on the game instead of patching upstream.

Nearly everything you mention is because of spam. If you do not have experience running a forum like this, sorry, but you do not understand. It's like an email address out in the open, getting spam in bulk 7/24, some of it rather malicious. We had our good share of wow coin, ugg boots, xrumer, russian warez and Indian resorts, the usual drill. Apart from these, one time a spambot managed to send personal messages, and there were at least three instances when some porn was posted directly, once even child porn. That's actually crossing the line into the territory where you may be just plain lucky if you can walk away with only "IANAL KTHXBAI". We - the admin team - did not choose to deal with this, and simply adjust the defences as necessary, so that we can be the community rather than e-cops. Wait, that's actually e-trashmen. Or even lower...

Oh yes, we would all love a working OpenID, no captchas, no questions, no registration. Unfortunately, as the spambots get better every year, that's right up there with ponies and free beer. Currently there are about three of us with enough time to sift through everything that goes on, pitting our human intellect and the inconveniencing automation against the mindless spambot zombie army raging outside. Sounds heroic? Remember: e-trashmen.

tl;dr: Your outrageous inconvenience is the price you pay for not seeing the child porn here and for the game being developed at all.

Anyway, please do not take this as berating you. You rant, I rant. 1:1 :P Actually, thanks for registering anyway!



PS: Prissi, I want your brain. Two sentences against my novel :D

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

IgorEliezer

Quote from: VS on December 27, 2012, 11:34:55 PM(...)and there were at least three instances when some porn was posted directly, once even child porn.
Another (if you forgot or just didn't want to mention) was a disgusting zoo p0rn. :S

Our forum (as well as the whole domain) is not a forgotten site or just a place where 5 fangamers join and chat. In fact, this site is already fairly known in the internet: we get between 700,000 and 1,200,000 page views per month, and we are pretty active here and in some 3rd party sites. We know this is not a big deal if comparated to the mainstream sites, but it is enough and pretty tempting for spammers. The more the site becomes known, the more it becomes a target. That's why we have taken security measures. That's the price to keep the forum clean and running.

Sorry for the inconveniences. Welcome to the Simutrans forum. :)