Namecoin Forum

Can I count myself now to the illustrious set of people, who passed the test?

It is no wonder, that people, which registered after 2017-11-30, haven't posted anything. Most people won't invest time to solve this issue.

For anyone else:

Click on your nick (in my case "questionmark") on the right top of this page below the search field, then on "User Control Panel", there on "Usergroups", select "Self confirmed users" and press "Submit".

It's intended to be an antispam mechanism (before we added that step, we were getting spambombed on a daily basis, and most spambots don't ever attempt to add themselves to user groups). Unfortunately, it sounds like it's causing confusion for more than just spambots.

Between the date of a forum upgrade sometime last year, and March 23, 2018, the notice at the top of the forum was gone, which indeed made it very difficult to figure out what to do. Admittedly the notice at the top of the forum right now is a bit vague... would it be helpful if I copied your more explicit instructions into the notice?

I agree with questionmark. These stupid captcha detectors are the biggest reason I drop down and bail on using a certain website/forum.

omarabid wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 28, 2018 7:11 pm

I agree with questionmark. These stupid captcha detectors are the biggest reason I drop down and bail on using a certain website/forum.

I'm open to suggestions on how to improve the situation, but calling things stupid and suggesting that you might leave the forum are not constructive suggestions.

For the record, BitcoinTalk is doing lots of sketchy stuff to avoid spambots, e.g. mandatory CAPTCHAs on login and discrimination against Tor users. IMO those are not ethical alternatives.

I already suggested one possible improvement in this thread and asked if it would be a good idea. Neither you nor OP have answered that question, so there's nothing actionable I can go on at this point.

Please understand that all solutions to spambots are going to suck to some extent, and that our job here is to find the least sucky solution.

Maybe stopforumspam projects ?
https://www.stopforumspam.com/
https://stopforumspam.subnets.ru/ (mine)

having a captcha is a standard nowadays, i don't see the problem with it.

unless [tinfoil-hat-on]...

virus_net wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 29, 2018 5:25 am

Maybe stopforumspam projects ?
https://www.stopforumspam.com/
https://stopforumspam.subnets.ru/ (mine)

Generally I'm not a fan of IP-based blocking, because they tend to require large amounts of collateral damage to anonymizing proxies in order to actually be effective. The first project you listed is mentioned at https://trac.torproject.org/projects/to ... ngServices .

samurai321 wrote: ↑

Mon May 07, 2018 2:48 am

having a captcha is a standard nowadays, i don't see the problem with it.

unless [tinfoil-hat-on]...

Personally I'd prefer Hashcash over CAPTCHAs, because CAPTCHAs tend to discriminate against users with visual disabilities. I don't know if any well-audited Hashcash implementations for forum registration exist, though.

biolizard89
I dont know why everyone always think about IP blocking... And stop thinking forward.
You can use the DB data as you wish and not only block IP.
As example: If sender is listed in DB you can ask more qustions or view capcha or more email confirmations or anything else to be sure that it is not a bot or try to reject spamer registration.