Oolite Bulletins

El Viejo wrote:

The bb now has a ‘captcha’ thingy for new registrations. The half dozen suspects that I’ve splashed in the last two days have obviously passed that little test, so I presume this means that they’re not bots, but live spammers. Is this correct? Or are bots somehow getting past the ‘captcha’ thingy?

The standard way to bypass reCAPTCHA is to farm it out to real people using either fake porn sites or things like Amazon Mechanical Turk.

The old BB had reCAPTCHA, too, but it was an add-on rather than a core phpBB feature which presumably meant fewer bots recognized it.

I like it Ahruman...

An acquaintance who used to work in "marketing" - used to pay Eastern European students a few pence per website/forum that they joined as a new member with a particular ID so that he could push his marketing on them at a later date (we have hundreds of zero posting members and while I'm sure some of them are just shy lurkers I bet there's a fair number that are accounts set up for this very reason and just never "activated")

Thanks Ahruman... they're coming thick and fast today.
<raises Katana to strike again>

I noticed! I see one that looks a bit dodgy and by the time I've made decision I get the "that user doesn't exist message" I just wander off and sharpen my sword on my beak (or is that the other way round?)

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I just wander off and sharpen my sword on my beak (or is that the other way round?)

Ha! Please don't make me laugh... laughing makes me cough, and that hurts!

El Viejo wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I just wander off and sharpen my sword on my beak (or is that the other way round?)

Ha! Please don't make me laugh... laughing makes me cough, and that hurts!

<finishes casual preening> Apologies - all humour unintentional! Get well soon! (I'm feeling much better today - I don't have to hold my ribs or the top of my head when I cough - this is progress!)

Thick and fast... bag a couple, wingman.

El Viejo wrote:

Thick and fast... bag a couple, wingman.

Confirm - splash 2 - I repeat - splash 2

Moonlight on bare steel
Katana strikes, clean and true
Black, we own the night!

Beneath Sombrero,
Deep sockets burn with fire,
Empty as the void

DaddyHoggy wrote:

we have hundreds of zero posting members and [while] I'm sure some of them are just shy lurkers

The obvious benefit to registering is that you can keep track of unread posts and other such stuff. There's enough added functionality available to registered users - particularly now with the upgrade - that I can easily see why people would register even if they have no intention to ever post.

Yeah, I noticed that even the [Bot] family seem to be registered uses now

‘Bot on the landscape’… it would be nice if the visibility of their presence could be suppressed.

Your new avatar speaks volumes, Thargoid… did you ‘lose’ the original?