Calling all Moderators and Reapers

Message

#1 Post by **Xandor Tik'Roth** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 11:41 pm

As many of you already know, there has been a huge outbreak in spam accounts and pav has shut down new user registrations until further notice. While I fully back him in this decision, it also screws over the people that actually want/need to post on our forums.

I've decided that, in the effort to continue to promote ToME's future, to look into the possibility of moving the forum from phpBB to Invision. If this happens, I'll place a block on all incoming user registrations and have them be approved by Admin. Obviously, I don't want to do this by myself, so I'll need help.

If you're already a moderator on these forums, you're probably that way because there is a certain level of trust bestowed either by myself or by DarkGod, and I am willing to extend that trust to the new board if you're willing to become an Administrator and assist with approving new user accounts. This will not eliminate the need for regular Moderators, but we will experience a lot less spam, since it will be caught by the Admins.

If you're not a member of the moderation team, go ahead and either post here or send me a PM. I'm willing to take all the help I can get at the moment, so anyone willing should express interest.

For right now, we won't need too many, but I needed to see if there are people willing to contribute to this.

Thanks in advance for your support and replies.

#2 Post by **Yottle** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 11:49 pm

I would be willing to participate.

By the way, you might need to redo the moderator list. There are a bunch of us, but half of them are gone. Neil, ISNorden, The Fury, and The Cosmic Gerbil haven't posted for months. So it has been mainly Nerdanel, LB, Gwai, and myself keeping things clean lately.

#3 Post by **madmonk** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 11:59 pm

Count me in!

#4 Post by **Xandor Tik'Roth** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 12:24 am

You guys do understand the implications of all this, right? As an Admin, you would have to approve every single new user registration personally. As long as you guys are up for it, I am too.

Gwai · #5 Post by **Gwai** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:21 am

Happy to help. I'll feel way more useful t han when I'm deleting spammers anyway.

Also, I highly approve of the move. I am an admin on an Invision board and it is much much better from the user side. We moved from this sort of board to invision a couple years ago and no one has Ever been sorry, I think

.

#6 Post by **Yottle** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:25 am

Xandor wrote:You guys do understand the implications of all this, right? As an Admin, you would have to approve every single new user registration personally. As long as you guys are up for it, I am too.

for the past few months we moderators have been personally deleting 10 or more spam messages from each new user. It sounds like a reduction in our workload.

I would like a few more details. Would each Admin have the same views and responsibilities, or would the new user approvals be parceled out?

What information would we get that we could use to identify legitimate users? Most of the time it isn't hard to recognize spam accounts because they link to sleazy web sites, but that isn't universal.

In any case I think that it is worth trying. I appreciate pav's assistance, but it would be nice to keep this site from dying.

#7 Post by **Xandor Tik'Roth** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:32 am

Yottle, I have no idea how it would be parcelled, as I haven't set up the site yet, but I think it would be a universal thing. Also, afaik, the only info that you'd get regarding the spam accounts is what you guys already know. If it doesn't look legit, delete it. I'll trust your guys' best judgement. Hasn't bitten me yet.

Nerdanel · #8 Post by **Nerdanel** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 7:56 am

I think this might not be necessary, as I sent pav a diff that should fix the problem of spambots being able to register in the first place (and then another diff as I found an error in my first diff). Not having a phpBB installation of my own, I haven't been able to test it though.

Here's it again:

Code: Select all

--- usercp_register.php	2008-12-12 19:35:50.000000000 +0200
+++ usercp_register_mod.php	2008-12-12 23:04:51.000000000 +0200
@@ -413,6 +413,13 @@
 		}
 	}
 
+	// Checking if the user answered correctly on the ToME special
+	if ( strcasecomp($spamcatch, "quaff") != 0 )
+	{
+		$error = TRUE;
+		$error_msg .= ( ( isset($error_msg) ) ? '<br />' : '' ) . "You did not answer the antispam question correctly.";
+	}
+
 	$username_sql = '';
 	if ( $board_config['allow_namechange'] || $mode == 'register' )
 	{
@@ -1019,6 +1026,8 @@
 		$template->assign_block_vars('switch_confirm', array());
 	}
 
+	// ToME special: a question to thwart the spambots!
+	$spamcatch = 'To prove that you are not a spammer, write down what the q stands for in the q command in ToME\'s standard keyset. (If you have forgotten, take a look at <a href=http://wiki.t-o-m-e.net/Documentation/Game_commands#head-433ba16ffe631b90e3051dcc6d2d0c822feb0fc3> this wiki page</a> for the answer.) <input type="text" name="spamcatch" />';
 
 	//
 	// Let's do an overall check for settings/versions which would prevent
@@ -1034,6 +1043,7 @@
 		'PASSWORD_CONFIRM' => isset($password_confirm) ? $password_confirm : '',
 		'EMAIL' => isset($email) ? $email : '',
 		'CONFIRM_IMG' => $confirm_image, 
+		'SPAMCATCH' => $spamcatch,
 		'YIM' => $yim,
 		'ICQ' => $icq,
 		'MSN' => $msn,

#9 Post by **Xandor Tik'Roth** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 8:24 am

That might work... though i have no experience in coding...

Anyway, I went ahead and registered an Invision Power board for ToME and set it all up. The new user validation is actually incredibly simple. Simply log in to the Admin CP, go to the Manage Validating, and then review the users that have registered and accept them or delete the accounts. Any Admin can do this all from one screen, so it's pretty easy.

All I'd have to do is set up the forums again, so I'll let pav see if that code works. If not, I'll be ready to move the forum.

Nerdanel · #10 Post by **Nerdanel** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 11:55 pm

I might as well post the fixed version here, since the previous posted version has (at least) two bugs.

Code: Select all

--- usercp_register.php 2008-12-12 19:35:50.000000000 +0200
+++ usercp_register_mod.php     2008-12-14 00:21:15.000000000 +0200
@@ -413,6 +413,16 @@                                               
                }
        }

+       // Checking if the user answered correctly on the ToME special
+       if ( $mode == 'register' )
+       {
+               if ( strcasecmp($spamcatch, "quaff") != 0 )
+               {
+                       $error = TRUE;
+                       $error_msg .= ( ( isset($error_msg) ) ? '<br />' : '' ). "You did not answer the antispam question correctly.";
+               }
+       }
+
        $username_sql = '';
        if ( $board_config['allow_namechange'] || $mode == 'register' )
        {
@@ -1019,6 +1029,8 @@
                $template->assign_block_vars('switch_confirm', array());
        }

+       // ToME special: a question to thwart the spambots!
+       $spamcatch = 'To prove that you are not a spammer, write down what the q stands for in the q command in ToME\'s standard keyset. (If you have forgotten, take a look at <a href=http://wiki.t-o-m-e.net/Documentation/Game_commands#head-433ba16ffe631b90e3051dcc6d2d0c822feb0fc3> this wiki page</a> for the answer.) <input type="text" name="spamcatch" />';

        //
        // Let's do an overall check for settings/versions which would prevent
@@ -1034,6 +1046,7 @@
                'PASSWORD_CONFIRM' => isset($password_confirm) ? $password_confirm : '',
                'EMAIL' => isset($email) ? $email : '',
                'CONFIRM_IMG' => $confirm_image,
+               'SPAMCATCH' => $spamcatch,
                'YIM' => $yim,
                'ICQ' => $icq,
                'MSN' => $msn,

Just for your information.

#11 Post by **madmonk** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 2:37 am

There is one other way of trapping spam...

In your profile make sure that interests is not filled in, Spammers always fill that in with a variety of useless things.

This has been implemented in another forum and is handy to kill off spammers.

I also like Nerdanel's spam trap as well.

#12 Post by **Xandor Tik'Roth** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 3:59 am

A few things to report.

Madmonk, I've made you part of the moderation team. All of the moderators (you included, madmonk) should be able to see the Staff Discussion forum at the very bottom of the page. If you can't, let me know and I'll make the necessary adjustments.

LordBucket · #13 Post by **LordBucket** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:14 am

Hello, all.

Just a note: I'm pretty much out unless I see a massive surge of interest from somewhere. I see that there's now a ToME forum on angband.ook.cz, but I like it here, and I basically feel like I'd rather go down with the ship than hop into a a leaky lifeboat.

The forums are dead, the wiki is dead, T3 development is dead, and I apologize if this comes across badly, but honestly I feel like for the past year I've put more effort into T3 and module development than anyone. In fact...probably more than everyone else combined. DarkGod is missing in action, the T3 module development team is missing in action, and some of them aren't even bothering to respond to my emails. Over the past few months that we've all allegedly been working on T3, and of the five people who signed up for module development, I've received a grand total of exactly two file submissions, and neither of them actually worked without me going through and filling in the mising pieces because nobody could be bothered to actually try plugging their work into an actual module to see if it did anything.

So at this point I don't feel terribly motivated to go register on a new forum somewhere. The last stand for me was a month ago when I proposed we come up with a to-do list and a release date and was mostly ignored.

So yeah, I'm pretty much out. I may come back to check the forums and mail from the list in a month or so, but if I come back in a month and there's nothing new, I just don't see any reason to continue to be involved.

elcugo · #14 Post by **elcugo** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 4:20 am

The forum and the wiki are prety much dead and so is the code, the more I see the code, the more I feel the urge to rewrite it from scratch. I also have begun to hate Lua. T3 is a dead end and even when some people have tried to revive development in the mailing list this have received little to no feedback.

Right now I have almost no motivation to work in ToME related task, maybe if things resurrect I would like to work on it, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

#15 Post by **madmonk** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 9:57 pm

I split this topic since we went to talking about planning