What's up with all the spam?

[RCheesley]

There is stopforumspam.com which my joomla-based forums and user input (contact forms, registration forms etc) use, as well as querying project honeypot.

You get a false positive every now and then (especially with people who have a dynamic IP on a rubbish ISP) but on the whole it cuts spam to virtually zilch.

Ruth

 

[RCheesley]

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=176481 <-- link for vbulletin - not sure if it's been incorporated yet?

 

[Pauldohert]

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=176481 <-- link for vbulletin - not sure if it's been incorporated yet?

Nice work Ruth. I doubt that has been inorporated here. Judging by the other fixes needed.

Have you ever thought about setting up a alternative access forum,I think you may do it a lot better than its done by the owner here - I am sure the mods would appreciate an owner who had introduced this spam control as it shows an appreciation of the value of the time the mods put in.

Anyway Good work Ruth!

 

[RCheesley]

Paul,

Not my work, that integration, but I use the API on my sites along with PH.

Don't be fooled by thinking it's easy hosting a forum of this size and popularity, it requires very significant server resources which is not something I could provide free of charge - and there's not a lot of revenue streams for such a forum.

The other thing to consider, of course, is the wealth of information already contained here. It takes quite some time to get dedicated moderators, useful posts, and so forth.

Maybe it's something to consider but at the moment (like many open source web developers) I am completely snowed under (think a 20ft snow drift with me at the bottom) so it won't be high on my priorities!

Ruth

 

[Pauldohert]

Maybe the size and popularity of the site should be forceably restricted by the owner to what he can handle. Cos currently here the service is very poor.

 

[RCheesley]

I wonder how many of the users who make use of these resources actually contribute financially towards the upkeep of the site/server (or even if there is the option to do so?) and what kind of funds are generated from the ads being displayed - as it will cost to run this forum software, it will cost to host it, and so forth.

There's no reason for someone to upgrade the server it's hosted on if they're only going to have to pay more each month for something which is effectively a loss making feature of their site.