Forum Change: New user Moderation

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Moderators: Shir'le E. Illios, Bhaern Quel

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Shir'le E. Illios
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Forum Change: New user Moderation

Post by Shir'le E. Illios »

As you might have noticed over the last few days we've had a particularly vicious spambot attack with a bot mass-flooding the forum with spam. I had banned the user's IP before, but apparently the bot uses multiple IPs and just continued on. And due to a breakdown in communication between Bhaern and me (ironically his email landed in my spam folder) he was left alone to battle the waves of spam. While I've got admin controls allowing me to mass-delete a user's posts with a single click, Bhaern's moderator controls only allowed him to delete one topic/post at a time and unfortunately a roleplaying thread (Dark Moon) got caught in the crossfire. Add to that my poor backup practices (I've actually since found out that on the new board backups are incredibly easy so I'll improve) I didn't have a recent backup.

So changes had to be made.

To begin with I've removed the moderator ability to delete posts. In its place I've created a hidden forum that moderators should be able to move posts to. This way the posts are still effectively gone, but they can also be easily restored in case of error. I've also given Bhaern banning powers (which he was supposed to have already but seems that he didn't have those yet).

But most importantly I've enabled the moderation queue for new users' posts. What this means is that when a newly registered user makes a post it first has to be approved by Bhaern or myself (or any moderators we might have in the future) before anyone can see the post. If a user gets a post approved then they're no longer considered newly registered and can post without needing approval (i.e. nothing should change for the forum regulars). This means that things become slightly inconvenient for new users as they might not be able to post as smoothly as before, but in return it should completely stop spambots dead in their tracks as we obviously won't approve of spam posts. So a spambot like we had yesterday might posts its hundreds of new threads, but they'll all just end up in the queue (where we'll just delete them and ban the bot).

Of course that does mean that Bhaern and I will have to regularly check the queue to see if there are new requests. We'll do our best, but if for some reason we forget then new users should feel free to email me and prod me to approve of their posts (at least if they remain unapproved longer than a day).

Hopefully this will mean that we're finally rid of those spam bots (well, you lot are as Bhaern and I will still have to deal with them). And hopefully this won't be too inconvenient for new users. But honestly I didn't really see any other choice.


Love -x-x-x-

Shir'le


[[b:ldu85az0]EDIT[/b:ldu85az0]] Since I changed the requirement from three posts down to one post I updated the text to reflect this.
F'sarn natha tithaur wun l'su'aco.

-= Shir'le E. Illios =-
Chosen of Eilistraee
Bhaern Quel
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Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2006 10:32 pm

Re: Forum Change: New user Moderation

Post by Bhaern Quel »

Well as noted my powers have changed, better then being fired *G*
Another thing that might be note worthy, I have a better and faster means of contact with Shir'le.
My first call for help went into her span folder.
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