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    'Probie' Status for New Members

    Hi all,

    The mods have actually been planning this change for quite a while now, and the recent problems have prompted us to implement it now.

    From now on, all new registered members will enter the forum in Probie status. This is almost identical to the previous entry-level usergroup, Basic Trainees, except their posts are automatically queued for moderator approval and they cannot create photo albums on their profile page.

    ETA: They also will not have access to the profiles of others or themselves, or be able to send or receive Private Messages. And their Visitor messages will be moderated. This includes the use of signatures

    'Probie' status is intended to be short-term. It is a measure to help protect our community from spammers and other abusive users, and by no means punitive.

    The mods are on most hours of the day, every day, and will do their very best to approve posts from new members promptly.

    New members will be automatically promoted to "Basic Trainee" when they meet a minimum threshold for posts, length of membership, Reputation. (These thresholds will not be disclosed, for obvious reasons, and may be periodically adjusted.) The moderators are also empowered to manually promote new users if they are convinced that they are "law-abiding" citizens and not spammers in disguise.

    Thanks to everyone, and especially to our newest members for their patience and understanding.

    ETA: The more recent lockdowns on VM's, PM's and profile pages are solely due to spammers exploiting our members and our site to send their garbage out.
    Last edited by TameFarrar; 01 May 2010, 03:26 AM.
    GateWorld Podcast - Info - iTunes - Google
    The Stargate Omnipedia - www.StargateOmnipedia.com
    Stargate Image Gallery - www.StargateGallery.com

    #2
    Oooo, awesome! And probably long overdue, although I can understand your reluctance to implement it. Hopefully it'll work as a helping tool and not create an unpleasant amount of work for the mod team.

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      #3
      I've joined several like that. ...Which may or may not be a rousing endorsement, depending on one's opinion of me.

      Comment


        #4
        Frankly, if we weren't convinced that it is necessary to prevent DOS attacks, we wouldn't consider it. GW is just prominent enough now to be targeted, I guess.
        GateWorld Podcast - Info - iTunes - Google
        The Stargate Omnipedia - www.StargateOmnipedia.com
        Stargate Image Gallery - www.StargateGallery.com

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Darren View Post
          Frankly, if we weren't convinced that it is necessary to prevent DOS attacks, we wouldn't consider it. GW is just prominent enough now to be targeted, I guess.
          Sounds brilliant this new system. We need to get that for SCI FI.
          sigpic

          Comment


            #6
            I think it's a good idea. After the ridiculous spam spree yesterday, it's better to catch things like that before it goes public.

            Comment


              #7
              Shame a few people can ruin something.

              Man they were posting some nasty nasty things tho. I can see where you guys stand.

              Comment


                #8
                Newb question! DOS meaning like the operating system, attacks?

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by Agent_Dark
                  uhh, that's a rather extreme step just to stop DOS's.... How many actual DOS has gateworld had?

                  I think the terminology may have got lost in here, but DoS is a generic buzzword used to describe any kind of attack on a website that either brings it offline, or causes interuption to normal service, as opposed to DDoS which is a distributed attack, usually by throwing so much bandwidth at a site/server that it goes offline.

                  What Darren is referring to here, is attacks by spammers (porn / scammers in particular) that waste the mod's (and users time) by creating illegitimate threads that create overhead and potentially expose GW users to security risks.

                  Until vBulletin implements real anti-spam technology into their Bulletin Board software, manual user moderation for new members is the only way we can prevent auto spamming users, since there are 4 billion IP addresses out there from which they can spam from, and manually banning them is an impossibly difficult task to setup and operate.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Oh DOS as in denial of service. Got it now thanks Greg.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      we've actually been considering this probie step for quite a while. And have been using it quietly in the background for many months. Prior to this, we'd take a look at the new member list and make educated guesses about potential trouble makers. For obvious reasons, I won't reveal our personal criteria for 'mmhm, could be trouble'.

                      We'd talked about implementing this to stymie the persistent spammers that hit this site once or a few times a week, but haven't felt it necessary until now.

                      We're just doing what we can to keep trash off the forum, and really, this isnt' even something that will effect you guys. We know you're all real

                      It's just something for the newbies.
                      Where in the World is George Hammond?


                      sigpic

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Well i think it's a great idea...Especially after what happened yesterday.....I'm not one that gets offended easily but that was just......Oh i don't even know how to describe it

                        But great work guys with the cleanup and the quick response to it!
                        sigpic

                        Comment


                          #13
                          One of the other boards I'm a member of has a probationary period of 2 weeks and 100 posts before you are able to post images have you considered bringing in something similar? It would stop the people who sign up just to troll the board with pornographic images. Just an idea.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by pilgrim soul View Post
                            One of the other boards I'm a member of has a probationary period of 2 weeks and 100 posts before you are able to post images have you considered bringing in something similar?
                            I would imagine it would be similar but as Darren said, the hard limits won't be revealed.

                            I for one am in support of this, because yesterday during the attack I just started looking a new threads and seeing if the join date was August 08 then looked to see if it was spam.


                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by Agent_Dark
                              uhh, that's a rather extreme step just to stop DOS's.... How many actual DOS has gateworld had?
                              Well, next time you can spend your evening cleaning and banning, then.

                              As Greg said, until vBulletin comes up with a way to handle this in a more automated fashion, it has to be manual. New users who are inconvenienced by this ought to recognize that it is the mods who are bearing the brunt of the inconvenience load.

                              Other than getting new users to realize that their posts won't show up instantly, this will be entirely seamless.
                              GateWorld Podcast - Info - iTunes - Google
                              The Stargate Omnipedia - www.StargateOmnipedia.com
                              Stargate Image Gallery - www.StargateGallery.com

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