Oolite Bulletins

Hey all of you commanders out there!

I guess this message is mostly addressed to admins, but I cannot use PM yet (seems like) and didn't find a better section to post my question, but here, so...

It's been a few months already since I started trying to reach the forum, but it just won't open. I tried dosen of connection options, but the only way to read the forum was using the google cache. Jeez, I truly believed the forum was down until I found in google cache some fresh postings. Then I tried my Scandinavian VPN connection and yeah, now I managed to register and can post, but hey, this is my work VPN I ain't gonna use for private purposes.

Is there anything can be done to reach the forum from Russia (I guess it's like in ban list or something?).

Cheerz,
Bob

I can't help but there have been several russian members actively contributing so probably they can help. Some (edit: actually one) russian members reacted here
And I am sure you are familiar with the russian website of Oolite. I am sure there must be several members knowing how to read our forum.

(And for those not understanding Russian: the google translated page)

Yes, seems that some idiot turned GeoIP filtering on! Any aegidian.org admins here, could you please investigate?

ArkanoiD wrote:

Yes, seems that some idiot turned GeoIP filtering on! Any aegidian.org admins here, could you please investigate?

I don't know if GeoIP filtering is possible, but I don't think it's turned on: spambots from Russia and the Ukraine are signing up (and getting deleted) in large numbers at the moment. If they come from IP addresses with very large numbers of strikes against them on the Stop Forum Spam database, I generally IP-ban them ... of course it's possible that this might prevent some genuine users signing up. You could check your IP address(es) at

http://www.stopforumspam.com/

and see if they are flagged there. If they are, PM me and I'll see about un-banning them (and maybe also let the relevant IP-address admins know, to see if they can do something about the spambot traffic).

I tried several ISPs and all are blocked.

My current IP 178.176.218.255 is not blacklisted there but it is blocked too.

ArkanoiD wrote:

I tried several ISPs and all are blocked.

My current IP 178.176.218.255 is not blacklisted there but it is blocked too.

That IP address isn't on this bb's blocked list ... whatever the problem is, I'm afraid it's beyond my (very limited) capacity to resolve!

Could it be possible that hosting or upstream provider plays smart ass?

ArkanoiD wrote:

Could it be possible that hosting or upstream provider plays smart ass?

There's obviously something causing the problem, but what it is, I don't know: sorry! I can PM Giles and see if he can help.

Have raised this as an issue with my provider. If there is a solution I'll post it here.

Might be worth trying some proxy servers to see if the BB can be accessed.

That's what I do now.

Reply from namehog:

looks like Russian IPs were being blocked on our firewall due to high levels of attack - but I have freed this up now - so should be OK please let us know

So, that should have sorted it (at least for now).

Thanks!