So, why don't we use captcha, or have a waiting period for registration?
Asked by
XOIIO (
18328
)
January 19th, 2016
Maybe things have changed for registration, but it certainly doesn’t seem so, I’ve been away from the collective for a while but currently there is a crapload of spam questions, and plenty of old questions which have had spam responses in my alerts.
Why don’t we upgrade the registration system to counteract this? Maybe with recaptcha, or wait for someone to approve the account, which would likely slow down the spam, or the fake email addresses would at least have a better chance of being screened.
I understand that the developers haven’t paid much attention to the site since, but surely there is something that could be done to fight this.
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20 Answers
“I understand that the developers haven’t paid much attention to the site”.
Make that zero.
There is no development.
Look around a bit. “Questions for you” has been broken for months, as have most of the award notifications. Search doesn’t work on mobile.
You’re thought is good, but in reality, Fluther is just very slowly unraveling.
Perhaps even a bit faster since the passing of the founder’s beloved aunt and pillar of our community, @gailcalled.
Gailcalled died?
… shit, what happened?
You can click the link to gail’s page on my first post, @XOIIO.
Maybe I should also mention that @Adirondackwannabe also just passed.
I’m up having a little wallow in sorrow over that one right now.
Wow, we’ve lost at least 3 people, that really sucks, I wish I had gotten to know them a bit better, even though I wasn’t on here much. I remember them from when I was new :/
We need someone who can program in Python.
Isn’t @Johnpowell good at that, isn’t he the one that made firefox extensions or something along those lines?
@XOIIO I don’t know. I tried to download Python and I didn’t know what to do.
We do use a CAPTCHA. If you click on “Join Fluther”, you’ll get asked to prove that you’re human right after you enter your username, e-mail, and password. Since Ben set that up (sometime in 2014, I believe), there have been less spam accounts. Thank you, Ben.
The trouble is, while we are safe from spambots, we are not safe from human spammers.
A waiting period would solve that problem, but it would also be greatly discouraging to new users. In my opinion, the spam threads are the lesser of two evils.
Maybe we can have a members only room and a guest account for new Fluthers. That can be upgraded with 50 points. Like having the guest account like the wild west.
@RedDeerGuy Hm…if that guest account came without the ability to ask questions and post comments, new users would be discouraged. If it came with those abilities, nothing would really change, would it?
@longgone guest accounts can fully participate in the guest room and long term members can answer in. Maybe we can have two sites one guest and the other full members by invite only. Another have new members provide a credit card number. We already have friending by invite. You don’t have to be on the main page.
Maybe have the questions approved by an administrator first, so that they get screened out.
Let’s be honest: our spam problem is not that bad.
A couple of questions a day. Big deal. Spam on AnswerBag got so bad that when they redesigned the site they made it a feature. Now they’re closed.
Let’s not make mountains out of molehills. We need to encourage people to join if we want to keep Fluther alive, not make it less appealing.
I can program in Python. Are the founders really looking for someone to help?
@Mariah I sure hope so. Can you contact the mods?
@Mariah Thanks for the offer! I’ve let the team know, and we’ll PM you.
@ibstubro We’ll have to talk amongst ourselves, contact Ben, and discuss the details with @Mariah. Stay tuned. If you haven’t heard anything in a couple of weeks or so, feel free to contact us.
@Mariah Thank you!
I’m not a big spender, but if we need to throw a few dollars into a Paypal account…?
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