Inaction has lasted long enough..aka 1st P.N.B-T.E.O.C.C.C.P

[Misogi]

When I said admins, I meant these group of people
memberlist.php?mode=group&g=1288

or maybe these group of people
memberlist.php?mode=group&g=1287

They are also concerned by the reorganization, of course.

Shana's officially stalled, there's no point merging it with ZnT which is still being slowly translated. Not to mention it's nonsensical since the only similarity between the two series' is a Tsundere voiced in the anime by the same VA. Toss Shana into the Aux/Stalled though. [...]

Honestly if the complaint is the main page is too long, then the solution is simple: halve the height of the forum images so they're a rectangle. [...]

Ah, I forgot to check that. It's modified.
Suggestion added.

I also added a suggestion regarding Alt. Contributors. It may be much clearer that way.

[Devenk83]

- Additionally, we can create new Translator and Editor groups for Alternative Languages Contributors, if it can order this mess. Leaving the current ones for English members.

I talked about it with Misogi on Twitter, that we could also reorganize the groups for Alternative Languages Users.

The best we could do is to create new groups for alternative language editors and translators. Like this, peoples will not confuse us with JP/CH->EN editors/translators and we can have a better control of the groups.
Or at least, we need to have active members on the current leadership in each groups for the 4 bigger alternative languages communities (French, German, Indonesian and Spanish) + 1 for the smaller ones.

[Lery]

Well, at least one of your argument isn't one in my opinion :
"Forced password change every X months" is actually a built-in feature in order to improve security, but we could vote about it and disable it if it's upsetting everybody.

On the other hand, I agree with most of your concerns and think there should be a little cleanup and "update" of the Forum ^^' (Actually the forum is up to date, literally)
For example the "prune users" functionality could have been used since long, it's really a no-brainer in order to keep only active members.

By the way, if all what is needed is an admin which knows how to handle phpBB (we are currently in version 3.0.12, which is the latest stable one, released the 28.09.13), I can help you with that : I used to handle a few forums in the past (even a well known french forum, but that one wasn't and still isn't running phpBB) but I don't want to have to handle any administrative stuff (which is why I stopped from being admin on the said forums, there is always some issue at the end that you have to judge and so on and it's really boring), so if you need a techie, I'm there.

[onizuka-gto]

Can someone please summarise the concerning issues and the suggested solutions in this topic for me to quickly get up-to-date?

Thanks.

[cloudii]

Can someone please summarise the concerning issues and the suggested solutions in this topic for me to quickly get up-to-date?

Thanks.

Just the very first post, Oni. Misogi's been keeping it up to date.

You can ignore all the other posts(-ish).

[Mystes]

Can someone please summarise the concerning issues and the suggested solutions in this topic for me to quickly get up-to-date?

Thanks.

Forums:
1. Mandate a few BT seniors to revamp the usergroups,
2. Create new user groups for alt. language staff to separate them from the J/C/K-->EN staff.
3. Need more mods with more moderating powers to ban/unban bots/people, to delete the ghost accounts, and simplify the guidelines.
Wiki:
1. Simplify guidelines
2. Need a better bot-filtering registration system
3. Give back the more powerful page-protection functions.

Though Misogi's OP is well summarized enough.

[Misogi]

As cloud and Kira said, the first post has summed up some issues, suggestions and a solution for each of them, unless it needs the members' assistance.

Thanks, Oni.

I also added the problem with disapproving posts.

[thelastguardian]

It seems to me that doing this sort of discussion in a forum or by email is, in my experience, ineffective. I want to do an online chat on IRC with all the stakeholders involved. Let's tentatively set it this week (at the latest Sunday).


In the mean time I will investigate more ways of countering spams. I've installed additional IP/domains blacklists on both the forum and the wiki beginning of this month. My guess is they are not working well? Can someone give me an estimate.

PS. I agree the forum registration questions is absolutely ridiculous, but reCaptcha doesn't work as well as you would imagine.

[Misogi]

The problem with these blacklists is that real accounts are blocked or become unable to register.

[cloudii]

It seems to me that doing this sort of discussion in a forum or by email is, in my experience, ineffective. I want to do an online chat on IRC with all the stakeholders involved. Let's tentatively set it this week (at the latest Sunday).

Can we set a date and time? Naturally, this hinges around TLG's (and maybe Oni's?) schedule. ;D

Saturday would be a nice day, since we have such a range of timezones. Noon-earlyafternoon GMT pretty much covers a reasonable time all around the world.

In the mean time I will investigate more ways of countering spams. I've installed additional IP/domains blacklists on both the forum and the wiki beginning of this month. My guess is they are not working well? Can someone give me an estimate.

The automatic blacklists have hit larethian. Oni actually went and manually excluded him from future bans. Kira and I have also experienced like 30-second IP bans, but they went away after we refreshed.

Based on the number of us who have experienced it and reported it... you can assume there's at least as many that's affected regular members. A few of them have been reported at the Official "I got flagged as a spambot" thread, but there's probably a lot more that's unreported from less active members who haven't tried logging in recently.

As for legitimate spam... they come in waves. The worst it got last month was around maybe 10 forum spam posts per hour. On the Wiki, there was a particularly bad week when we were deleting 50-80 spam wiki pages a day.

EDIT: I took the liberty to go and calculate exactly how much spam we got in the last 2 months:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... sp=sharing

[Misogi]

Thanks for coming here, TLG.

I was also hit by the block, from what I heard.

Count me out if it's on Saturday afternoon (exams) or Sunday evening (must wake up at 5 a.m. next Monday), GMT+1. You have the first post if don't come by chance.

[larethian]

Can someone save a log of the IRC discussion for me? Would love to attend but I won't be able to make it this weekend as I have a weekend conference (in which I'm also one of the organizers) to attend.

[Mystes]

It seems to me that doing this sort of discussion in a forum or by email is, in my experience, ineffective. I want to do an online chat on IRC with all the stakeholders involved. Let's tentatively set it this week (at the latest Sunday).

TLG ON IRC!!!!!!!! :DDD

I prefer somewhere around Friday/Saturday night ~11PM GMT, or Sunday noon. I guess it'll be on #Baka-Tsuki, @rizon?

Can someone save a log of the IRC discussion for me? Would love to attend but I won't be able to make it this weekend as I have a weekend conference (in which I'm also one of the organizers) to attend.

Will do so. Pastebin?

[thelastguardian]

From the spreadsheet, it appears that the spam count on the forum is greatly minimized.

When those users are shown to be blocked, does the error message contain which blacklist they are on?

As for the wiki, I am rotating the spam questions every 2 weeks. It takes the spammers a few weeks before they realize the questions have changed.

Sunday noon is fine with me. Tentatively 1pm GMT (I live in North America west coast, so it's -7 for me.)

[cloudii]

When those users are shown to be blocked, does the error message contain which blacklist they are on?

Uh, sometimes(?). However, the error messages do look different. For example, you can compare these two:

Spoiler! :

Your IP 114.79.17.177 or your username Asvare or your e-mail address [email protected] has been blocked because it is blacklisted.
An entry on the blacklist may have several reasons:
1. You are a well-known spammer.
2. Last time a well-known spammer was using the dynamic IP address which you got from your ISP (Internet Service Provider), your e-mail address or the username you have choosen.
3. Your ISP is well-known for a lot of spamming customers and is not fighting against spammers enough.

It appears the most frequent bans are temporary ones. A user will try to log on and it'll say they're banned. 15 minutes later when they come back, there's no problem. In my case, I'm usually browsing on the forum (or making a post), and I'll get hit with a blacklist error message.

Here's the thread with the full incident report: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5880&start=45#p229893