So many looking. Not many buying

[Lynnzer]

If you look over the site Members Online section you'll see a large number of guests who are just visiting to, I think, search for answers to some of their own problems, or to obtain data for species, plants etc.
While we don't hold our hands up with a No Entry sign, can I encourage those people to join as a member. The advantages are many, not least that their specific problems can be aired and well thought out answers given. We don't make any demands on membership. We don't even need for much in the way of personal details.
Every member adds to the true spirit of the forum and also potentially gives some financial benefit to the upkeep of the forum.
Without places like this, you'll be pretty much at a loss in getting immediate feedback on questions of importance, as well as just joining in the chat.

PLEASE JOIN THE FORUM AND HELP US TO HELP YOU​

 

[Deleted member 149562]

There are alot of "guests" who are bots.

They are used for page ranking on search engines (they collect data on website traffic, specific high clicked threads/trending threads and advert clicks etc)

There are also the occasional rogue bots who actually do register and sit, watch or they register, sit and attempt to spam either via the PM system or via posting on threads - older, quieter threads tend to be targetted.

As someone who built and ran a high number of forums like this one, there are "gateways" to prevent the bots registering. Vbulletin, now Xenforo, has always been pretty good on the bot gateways.

On any one day you might well find that 50% to 75% of the "guests" are infact bots......admin and mods can see the IP and it usually shows where the bot originates, whether friend or foe.

 

[Lynnzer]

It might be useful if the stats were posted on forum from time to time.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

The forum software can actually be tweaked to show more information if the admin wishes

It can highlight with the use of colour and/or italic who is a moderator, admin, bot (and name the bot origin) etc

Some sites use the full range of options, some don't....the admin control panel has more options that you could imagine it having. Sometimes the admin and the site owner who has the licence and pays for the site to exist, will limit the use of these options according to cost and bandwidth...and aesthetics come into it too.

The owner of the forums I built and ran for over 15 years liked to keep things simple, other sites I have seen use the full gammut of options and it can look very busy in aethetics, which can be a put off.

Getting the balance right is not easy. You, as admin and/or owner, have to balance everything carefully....more options can sometimes mean slower loading if the servers are on their limit for example, movement to a beefier server set might be cost prohibitive to a sole owner, where as a group owner who owns a multitude of forums can often expand the options used.

 

[GaryE]

Until very recently I moderated a forum that had a fraction of the traffic and discussion this one has. It never really got off the ground, and has pretty well folded. I would estimate that 95% of the requests to join were bots, and ip tracing put almost all of them in Russia. When the attack on the Ukraine began, they had about a 10 day break when no one joined - I checked the wreck out of curiosity and the pattern was interesting.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

Until very recently I moderated a forum that had a fraction of the traffic and discussion this one has. It never really got off the ground, and has pretty well folded. I would estimate that 95% of the requests to join were bots, and ip tracing put almost all of them in Russia. When the attack on the Ukraine began, they had about a 10 day break when no one joined - I checked the wreck out of curiosity and the pattern was interesting.

The Russian bots are a right royal pain in the backside. If they do manage to get through the various gateways that normally trap them they can be a moderators nightmare

It is very telling that the numbers of them dropped when the Ukraine invasion began. Back when the Russian incursions happened elsewhere some years ago (Georgia & Chechnya especially), I saw a marked drop in Russian bot traffic on the sites I was admin on......it was different in that back then there were no sanctions like there are now, but I and my moderators thought the bots must have been busier on the media outlets monitoring than being a pain in the backside on general subject forums like ours.

 

[GaryE]

The owner of the other, old site chose the mods, and one was a libertarian who decided we were unfair to Russians as part of some kind of political conspiracy. He accepted a whole bunch of bot requests and membership skyrocketed. All those poor Russian aquarists were being picked on, you know.
That did not end well.
I sure felt attractive when all those young women wanted me so badly. Clearly, fish talk is really stimulating in that culture!

 

[Deleted member 149562]

The owner of the other, old site chose the mods, and one was a libertarian who decided we were unfair to Russians as part of some kind of political conspiracy. He accepted a whole bunch of bot requests and membership skyrocketed. All those poor Russian aquarists were being picked on, you know.
That did not end well.
I sure felt attractive when all those young women wanted me so badly. Clearly, fish talk is really stimulating in that culture!

Ah yes...the usual flock of buxom females looking for their meal ticket to the west.....

 

[Lynnzer]

I sure felt attractive when all those young women wanted me so badly. Clearly, fish talk is really stimulating in that culture!

Mermaids perhaps

 

[GaryE]

Mermaids perhaps

Or a variety of people with stolen photographs and predatory ways.

There was a lot of porn, alternative therapies, political stuff and, quite strangely, garden tools. We cleaned them out as best we could, but the forum, already on life support, never rebounded. I gave up and came over here.

 

[Rocky998]

If you look over the site Members Online section you'll see a large number of guests who are just visiting to, I think, search for answers to some of their own problems, or to obtain data for species, plants etc.
While we don't hold our hands up with a No Entry sign, can I encourage those people to join as a member. The advantages are many, not least that their specific problems can be aired and well thought out answers given. We don't make any demands on membership. We don't even need for much in the way of personal details.
Every member adds to the true spirit of the forum and also potentially gives some financial benefit to the upkeep of the forum.
Without places like this, you'll be pretty much at a loss in getting immediate feedback on questions of importance, as well as just joining in the chat.

PLEASE JOIN THE FORUM AND HELP US TO HELP YOU​

And give us your wallets

 

[jaylach]

I have a history of doing code that goes back to the early 80's or late 70's. I run a computer help forum that has not had a successful bot registration in over four years. Can't stop a human spammer but it is actually pretty easy to stop bots.

Here is my solution as to bots. It is actually so simple that it is genius...

Spambot test

computerhaven.com

It is just not possible for a bot to click things in the right order. If the number sequence is entered correctly it will then go to the actual registration process. A bot will not pass the initial page. I wrote the test code then modified the forum software to direct a registration request to my code before going to the actual registration process. It just works.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

I have a history of doing code that goes back to the early 80's or late 70's. I run a computer help forum that has not had a successful bot registration in over four years. Can't stop a human spammer but it is actually pretty easy to stop bots.

Here is my solution as to bots. It is actually so simple that it is genius...

Spambot test

computerhaven.com

It is just not possible for a bot to click things in the right order. If the number sequence is entered correctly it will then go to the actual registration process. A bot will not pass the initial page. I wrote the test code then modified the forum software to direct a registration request to my code before going to the actual registration process. It just works.

That is similar to Captcha...which Vbulletin and now Xenforo have as standard - the admin can choose tween combinations of random numbers, letters or both or they can do the image based variant.

 

[jaylach]

That is similar to Captcha...which Vbulletin and now Xenforo have as standard - the admin can choose tween combinations of random numbers, letters or both or they can do the image based variant.

Yes my solution is very much like Captcha but is unique in it's form. Captcha has had the fault of being predictable and bots beat it fairly often. My solution has over 4 years without a single successful bot registration.

 

[Deleted member 149562]

Yes my solution is very much like Captcha but is unique in it's form. Captcha has had the fault of being predictable and bots beat it fairly often. My solution has over 4 years without a single successful bot registration.

Ah but its so much fun having to de-bot occasionally.....afterall, we can't have the mods falling asleep at their keyboards from boredom and having nothing to do can we, eh?