Greetings: (Updated July 10, 2007)

User registration has been turned on in order to minimize the amount of trash postings. It is amazing the even with the visual code confirmation enabled, automated software crawling the Web was able to register and post. A search on the phpBB forum website turned up a simple but elegant solution: Ask a simple question that requires human intervention, and reject registration if the answer is wrong. In the case of RF Cafe, I ask for the solution to an addition problem. From what I can tell, in the three months that it has been in use, maybe one trash registration has been made. I have had to delete a couple posts due to irrelevance, but otherwise it has been great!

Please send me an e-mail if you have any problems with registration. Thanks for your participation.


- Kirt Blattenberger






***** Below is the original post ****
Due to the vastly increased number of spammer registrations being encountered, beginning now I will automatically delete all registrations with the following characteristics:

* Whenever the "Location" field listed in registration is US, USA, or Russia.
These are almost always spam registrants. Please do
not even bother to fill in the "Location" field.

* Any registration that has not been confirmed via e-mail within one week.

* Any registration that looks suspicious to me.
Please be sure to use a sensible alias as a screen name,
and be sure to fill in the "Occupation" or "Interest" fields
with meaningful descriptions.

I apologize for the inconvenience to honest users, but this process help keep the garbage from ruining everyone else's experience.

_________________
- Kirt Blattenberger
RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster

Kirt,
Are you only deleting new registrations or any registration not in compliance? Just wondering if I need to update my info.

Thanks,
Jason

Greetings Jives:

The new rules only apply to new registrations, so you do not have to bother changing your current information. Thanks for asking.

It is amazing how much spam is posted or attempted to be posted. You probably noticed that there were two trash posts just below yours. I go through at least 3-4 times a day deleting bogus users and posts, and still it continues.

In trying to foster more forum participation, for a long time I did not require registration confirmation. However, the amount of spam grew to sometimes 50 per day. It was not uncommon for me to spend half an hour just deleting posts. For a long time the visual confirmation kept the trash out, but then the spammers got by that, so I instituted the e-mail confirmation. That worked for a long time, but now the spammers must have a staff of desparate drug addicts and other assorted scum bags that sit at computers and infiltrate forums all day and night.

Most of the IP addresses are from Denmark, Russia, China, Korea, and the Philippines. The list correlates pretty closely to the widely published list of largest abuser countries. It says a lot about the governments of those countries for allowing it.

The next step will be to require new users to e-mail me directly and I will set up an account for them. Some of the other large forums have been doing that for a long time (e.g., eng-tips.com).

As with other forms of terrorism, it is infuriating that the decent people of the world let this continue. I have said before and continue to say that I totally advocate what the people in Russian did to that one super spammer - turned off his switch with a hammer to the head.

_________________
- Kirt Blattenberger
RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster

Greetings:

Today, August 8, 2010, I changed the new user registration settings so that confirmation is sent directly to me for validating. This will hopefully put an end to the spammers.

This means that it might be a couple hours until you are able to post to the forum while you wait for me to activate your registration.

Keeping the garbage off the forums will make it a better experience for everyone.

Thanks for your patience.

_________________
- Kirt Blattenberger
RF Cafe Progenitor & Webmaster