KuroiHikari wrote:Just add in a custom BT question together with the captcha, and it should work for a few months like it always did.
And then? The spambots gets updated, change their IP's (since they are dynamically assigned) but we can't act fast enough and in just a week we have waves of spam. Sorry for saying this without being more "suave" but the admins should look for definitive solutions to these kinds of problems. Everyone at B-T should be busy translating, editing, being moderator between users, enforcing policies, being a leecher, reading, giving words of appreciation/encouragement, whatever they are supposed to do, except fighting spam individually which is not the solution on short, medium and long time basis. It's time consuming and isn't fast enough to prevent damage from start. Here's some ripped off reasons why banning (human based blockages) is not useful when fighting spam:
Banning:
- + can be used to fight against single humans who want to fight especially against your board (the only + of the list that really matters)
+ banning don't need any third party components
- banning is not working automatically
- you have to host the banning data(base) on your board
- the list will not been filled and maintained automatically
- Banning is working only with User Activation or Double Activation
Blocking:
- + blocking is working automatically
+ blocking is works with most of account activation methods
+ Blacklists are filled and maintained automatically by their policies
+ the blocking database is not hosted at your board
- Blacklists are third party components
- can not be used to fight against single humans who want to fight especially against your board
So, implementing a new CHAPTCHA ain't good enough too:
Visual confirmation captchas:
- + you can use several different captchas
- blind users are not able to register
- a lot of not blind users - e.g. old users - are having problems with them, too == false positives
- visual confirmation can be hacked - it's just a question of time till the first Yuki has hacked them
- they are not preventing any human spammers
- they are using third party components
- they are taking a little bit of extra performance
- Admin activation (or Double Activation) still is needed.
Q&A captchas:
- + spam bot programs have problems to fill them out correctly (until the spammer figure out the responces)
- human spammers will get them filled out correctly related to the languages they understand
- they are not looking professional or serious
- Admin activation (or Double Activation) still is needed
+ does not reduce server board performance
I've posted a link about several blocking methods that could be used to fight wiki-spammers. Is more complicated to implement that a simple CHAPTCHA? Yes, but think about all that lost men/labor hours just deleting, banning and reverting spam. Also, since you don't have their account in B-T databases the server itself will be glad too.
Here is the sources from where I ripped off:
https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/ ... /faq/f_391 and
https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/ ... /faq/f_395 , and please don't tell me those reasons only apply to forums, because the author itself is trying to use the most generic term, so it can be used in every kind of suscription service.