Define Cynical Fan Forums

mainly, the fact that it's forced.

Oh wahhh a mandatory rule for the overall good of the site.

foxchild ought to be with me on this, he hates the government setting rules that people are capable of doing without being forced to.

I'm with Doog here. Fixing the Captcha would be a much less intrusive way of getting rid of the spammers. We've had numerous people sign up solely to comment on a single comic strip thread and then leave, which is fine since that's all they really wanted to do. They had no intention of joining the community, and forcing them to post a welcome message would just frustrate such people.

Now granted, since we're no longer a DCS fan site really, this situation probably won't be nearly as common, but the point remains. It's still forced, and thus still annoying.

Yeah I guess so. I forgot about the people that join and post once.

Oh, the better Captcha is definitely the better way to go. another thing that would work is enforceability to remove these bot accounts before they post 20 times. If the hidden "Activate me!" forum can be avoided, then best to avoid it.

Oh, and G[Bot ], terrible argument =P

really? darn... I already printed that on bumper stickers in support of my Moderatorship

Yeah let it be known that Dan won the argument, not you.

Edit: Haha that was so rude.

I thought this would have been clear by now, but any spam topic or post will be deleted (even if they make Angela laugh) when the mods notice them so there's no point in replying to them as your post/s will be swept into Ginnungagap along with them.

Why don't we have one of those boxes that ask you a silly question, like what's the name of the forums as verification?

I've made the CAPTCHA a little more difficult, and registration requires activation via e-mail now. Hopefully that'll reduce the flow a little.

I've also banned the IP ranges of a couple of Chinese ISPs - a little drastic, perhaps, but if that stops them then I guess it'll have to do.

I was going to suggest making people respond to an email. Thats pretty standard on most forums.

and registration requires activation via e-mail now.

Have you confirmed that emails are being sent properly? I may have to configure my SMTP to relay outgoing mail like I had on my old server.

I just checked, and no it's not.

and registration requires activation via e-mail now.

Have you confirmed that emails are being sent properly? I may have to configure my SMTP to relay outgoing mail like I had on my old server.

I have yet to receive the activation e-mail for my test account. If you wouldn't mind fixing SMTP, that would be good - a forum does kind of need to be able to send e-mail.

EDIT: Jason is on the case, e-mail activation is disabled again and will be re-enabled as soon as SMTP is working.