Rag Tag Fleet status.

[Ragtag]

I just wanted to give you folks a heads up about the forum.

Our kind host Yankee Clippers Mobile Dog Wash and Groom was greeted this morning to some nasty PORN posted by one of our members.

I had some pretty tight controls on who could join and it was all in the Forum Rules and member agreement. I recently relaxed those rules due to hate mail about how restrictive I was. Well I got bit by an a-hole that joined and posted porn as their very first post.

I've been told to shut down the forum because I violated my agreement with my host. You see they are a business that is very concerned that such things get posted and thanks to Google catch some nice crap porn is now associated with them and they are not in the least bit happy.

I have convinced them to allow me to keep the forum open but I can no longer accept members. They will now be watching very closely and if there is one more violation or something they don't like they will pull the plug.

 

[Urwumpe]

It usually isn't your fault, if you remove it ASAP.

Also, we currently have good experiences in our Battletech chapter forum by using a visual captcha system, maybe you can use the same extension for keeping the spammers out. It seems to work well.

Another way would be restricting the right to post images and links, until some qualification is reached (Time, approval of moderators, good post votes)

 

[Face]

I have convinced them to allow me to keep the forum open but I can no longer accept members. They will now be watching very closely and if there is one more violation or something they don't like they will pull the plug.

In this case I'd strongly suggest to close the forum for good on this host. No point in having a forum without members, after all. How about changing it into a CMS site, where you - and you alone - post news about the Ragtag fleet? Maybe with a dedicated mailing list, so fans of the fleet can exchange information?

That or change the forum host (which is quite possibly costly and no option)...

Just my :2cents:

 

[Ragtag]

Every member has to be approved by an admin and has to complete registration via an email. This turkey passed through all my spam guards and manual checks so I sent them the activation email. They did get nailed by my spam trap for robots so I suspect the guy manually registered with legit info following all the rules and then ran a spam bot against us. In the past I have been able to delete these type of things before my host sees them. This time my host saw it before me and asked me what the story was. All in all it was just bad timing that the host checked the site and saw it before I did. This is the third time they have had to inform me of porn on the forum and they are none to happy about it. It was also very graphic porn complete with video and it was the first new post of the day so anyone visiting the site would see it as a new post. Hopefully they will ease up on me in a couple of months when they see I have control of the forum again.

---------- Post added at 12:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:19 PM ----------

In this case I'd strongly suggest to close the forum for good on this host.
Just my :2cents:

Nice idea but they host me for free because I web master their business site which frankly is a very simple site so I really don't have much to do as web master. If I had to pay I'm not sure I would bother running the forum. I'm thinking of making the forum a developer only one and giving access to BETA testers as needed. Then I'll just post the add-ons on OHM when done. I may start moving some of the more recent add-ons like the Firefly to OHM as soon as I write up some read me docs for them.

 

[Urwumpe]

if your host has never had spam problems, you should better switch... this isn't making me feel secure, this has a feeling of "This never happened to us. Never."

 

[Face]

Nice idea but they host me for free because I web master their business site which frankly is a very simple site so I really don't have much to do as web master. If I had to pay I'm not sure I would bother running the forum. I'm thinking of making the forum a developer only one and giving access to BETA testers as needed. Then I'll just post the add-ons on OHM when done. I may start moving some of the more recent add-ons like the Firefly to OHM as soon as I write up some read me docs for them.

Well, I already wrote that it might be no option because of the costs. Forgive me if I'm being bold here, but to me it looks like a bad deal, if your payment for web mastering is this kind of "free" hosting.
If it is a goodie they gave you in addition, it would be a reason for me to do NO public service of ANY kind on it. The danger of having some idiot abuse it and making my web-mastering seem like crap would be much to high for me in such a situation.

Besides this, what do you think of the idea of a CMS instead of a forum? You snipped that out of the quote...

 

[Ragtag]

if your host has never had spam problems, you should better switch... this isn't making me feel secure, this has a feeling of "This never happened to us. Never."

My anti-spam software takes about 500 hits a day by spammers trying to register. Every once in a while one gets through and post some porn with links. My host and by host I don't mean hosting service but rather a company that gives me sever space and time for free, has a static site with no way for spam to get on it other than hijacking the entire web site which seldom happens to small businesses like them.

 

[Urwumpe]

My anti-spam software takes about 500 hits a day by spammers trying to register. Every once in a while one gets through and post some porn with links. My host and by host I don't mean hosting service but rather a company that gives me sever space and time for free, has a static site with no way for spam to get on it other than hijacking the entire web site which seldom happens to small businesses like them.

Yes, could be. But then, you sure can do the math: Perfect security is impossible unless you cut the cable. That out of 500 attempts, only a few every blue moon make it through the process is a good result. if you could limit the setting of links/images in your forum, you could sure also catch some spammers automatically.

 

[Ragtag]

Well, I already wrote that it might be no option because of the costs. Forgive me if I'm being bold here, but to me it looks like a bad deal, if your payment for web mastering is this kind of "free" hosting.
If it is a goodie they gave you in addition, it would be a reason for me to do NO public service of ANY kind on it. The danger of having some idiot abuse it and making my web-mastering seem like crap would be much to high for me in such a situation.

Besides this, what do you think of the idea of a CMS instead of a forum? You snipped that out of the quote...

Well to be up front the business is family so it is kind of hard to refuse to help them out. I would have been doing it for nothing anyway and allowing me to have server space and the forum is just a side benefit. The only problem is that their business is a very family oriented one and they really fear having something like porn that a child might come across accidentally. The chances of that happening is really not very likely but it's their business and I don't blame them.

I considered changing to a CMS a few times. I even install and set-up Joomla and Drupal twice. It really didn't catch on as I had hoped and I don't know why. In fact I just took down the last Drupal CMS two weeks ago It had been running for over a year and not a single fleet member checked it out or commented on it even though I had an active forum thread asking opinions. I personally like the CMS idea but I guess nobody else did.

 

[Hielor]

Ugh, that stinks, sorry to hear about that.

If I might have a couple suggestions:
- Make your "spam trap" forum area write-only for members, so once a topic is posted nobody can see it (if your forum software supports that)
- Make that forum area require moderator approval for new threads. Or maybe just make all new threads require moderator approval--I don't know how much forum traffic you guys are getting these days or if that would be feasible
- Make threads/posts including images/links/videos require approval
- Make a member's first few posts require approval

 

[NovaSilisko]

You know, the same thing happened to the KSP forum yesterday...

 

[Izack]

Ouch. Really sorry to hear that; never a nice thing to log in and find.

- Make a member's first few posts require approval

That's what we do here. It works quite well for catching spammers and hooligans before anyone sees them.

 

[Ragtag]

I just installed the newest version of forum software which now allows for mod or admin approval of posts. The way I'm setup lumps everyone other than admins and mods into a single group. I'll have to create a new member group that requires admin or mod approval of posts. After a certain number of posts I can automatically move them into a group that doesn't need approval.

Now I just have to convince my host that it will help prevent bad things from happening so that I can enable registration again.

Thanks for the suggestions folks.

 

[gattispilot]

Rag Tag Fleet is gone

The Rag Tag Fleet has set course for the Sun. FYI the rag tag fleet is history

 

[Urwumpe]

The Rag Tag Fleet has set course for the Sun. FYI the rag tag fleet is history

I would appreciate this information from Rag Tag directly, sorry... "history will be kind with me, for I intend to write it."

 

[gattispilot]

Ok. I got it from Jon. Thought I would pass it on.

 

[Urwumpe]

Ok. I got it from Jon. Thought I would pass it on.

Was not meant bad, I simply dislike such Chinese whispers communication, if the responsible person himself has a user account here. It prevents communication faults.

 

[dbeachy1]

O-F Staff Note: we can confirm that the author of Rag Tag Fleet has withdrawn his add-ons. If you have any questions please email the author directly.

Thread closed.