Weeding out the inactive spambot members

If you check this out members on this forum, you can clearly see all the spam bots. No one uses Yahoo anymore and if you hover over the web link icon, you can see that almost all of them are just spam promoting adult websites or the like

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?action=mlist;sort=registered;start=0;desc

Also note that almost all the new members that joined in the last few months have 0 posts

I don't know if there is a script you could run which removes a member if they still have 0 posts after a set time. It would remove many of the bots that are connected with the site

If you check this out members on this forum, you can clearly see all the spam bots. No one uses Yahoo anymore and if you hover over the web link icon, you can see that almost all of them are just spam promoting adult websites or the like

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?action=mlist;sort=registered;start=0;desc

Also note that almost all the new members that joined in the last few months have 0 posts

I don't know if there is a script you could run which removes a member if they still have 0 posts after a set time. It would remove many of the bots that are connected with the site

Plenty of people just want to read the site and have no interest in posting, having 0 posts doesn't mean you're not real.

The yahoo thing, that's super sketchy.

Quote from: Shifter on March 11, 2021, 08:33:22 AM

If you check this out members on this forum, you can clearly see all the spam bots. No one uses Yahoo anymore and if you hover over the web link icon, you can see that almost all of them are just spam promoting adult websites or the like

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?action=mlist;sort=registered;start=0;desc

Also note that almost all the new members that joined in the last few months have 0 posts

I don't know if there is a script you could run which removes a member if they still have 0 posts after a set time. It would remove many of the bots that are connected with the site

Plenty of people just want to read the site and have no interest in posting, having 0 posts doesn't mean you're not real.

The yahoo thing, that's super sketchy.

Unless they have a burning desire to read complete nonsense or the angry ranting boards they don't need to sign up

Looking back, there are maybe less than 20 members since the start of 2020 and of about 6000 member sign ups that actually contributed. The rest looks like spam bots

Go and click on a random one. You will see the 'Date Registered' and 'Last Active' is within minutes of each other. Hover over the web link and you will see its either nonsense characters or promoting some adult website

I've thought for a while that we should have the ICQ field act like a honeypot of sorts, where it's not even visible to real people signing up but any automated scripts that sign up and try to populate that field get automatically banned. Or leave it visible even. Doesn't matter. If it's filled in, it's probably someone here to cause trouble.

Taking another look. There are a total of 25510 members

13850ish have a grand total of 0 posts. More than half of our member list is probably either spam bots or people who signed up and then never returned anyway.

Don't know, it was just a thought. Not sure if you could write a script which bans (or just deletes) all members that have had zero posts and have not logged online after a month of joining or something. It's not like you'd be upsetting anyone

I like your honeypot idea of ICQ lol

Quite a while ago I think I remember John Davis saying that he deleted at bunch of these 0 post accounts and that it speeded up the site by quite a bit.  I think it's done every once in a great while.

One thing that I'm certain has been done from time to time is removing accounts that were never activated. That means they signed up, but never clicked the link they were emailed after signing up, and so never actually logged in for the first time.

I don't think we should delete accounts that aren't spam and haven't posted, IF those accounts have been used to log in before. Plenty of people just want to lurk from time to time. And maybe one day they will want to post, and they shouldn't have their account deleted just... well just because. I don't think our database is struggling to keep up with requests we are throwing at it, so a major purge isn't really something I think we need to be doing.

I have deleted many hundreds of inactive/spam accts. There's a place in the admin cp where I can manually click a box next to each one of them, or I can choose to delete the entire page (I think). I have been told it does nothing for the performance of the site, and I have been told that it speeds up the site.

I am one of those people that sign up to forums just to read boards that are off limits to non-members.  Mass deleting them would likely catch a few real users.

Of course, it's not like deleting those accounts is a big deal. If it happened to me I'd spend 5 minutes making a new one if I cared. With no posts it's not like anyone is going to be upset their empty account was wiped.

No one uses Yahoo anymore...

I do. But only for entirely inconsequential things. Now if someone has a .aol email address, they should be severely penalized in some very painful manner.

Quote from: Shifter on March 11, 2021, 08:33:22 AM

No one uses Yahoo anymore...

I do. But only for entirely inconsequential things. Now if someone has a .aol email address, they should be severely penalized in some very painful manner.

They don't use the instant messenger though. Or AIM, that's dead too. Bots frequently sign up with those fields filled out, or the ICQ one that I mentioned earlier.

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?action=mlist;sort=registered;start=0;desc

They've been trying out every name under the sun lately. Look at all our noobs! 

I don't know if there is a script you could run which removes a member if they still have 0 posts after a set time.

People who don't post are so disruptive!   

Quote from: JJA on March 11, 2021, 08:35:23 AM

I don't know if there is a script you could run which removes a member if they still have 0 posts after a set time.

People who don't post are so disruptive!   

Ummm. I didn't say that.

I cleared these out some years ago. It's not hard to do, and it's worth looking at for SEO reasons. 13850/25510 is a suspiciously high percentage. It makes me wonder if we are losing posts or something odd, though I don't have any concrete examples of that.


I can clear them out again this week if folks want

I cleared these out some years ago. It's not hard to do, and it's worth looking at for SEO reasons. 13850/25510 is a suspiciously high percentage. It makes me wonder if we are losing posts or something odd, though I don't have any concrete examples of that.


I can clear them out again this week if folks want

The fake bots might 'fluff' up our numbers that make us appear like a much larger community then we actually are though....

But there must be a better way to prevent bots from signing up in the first place.... Does this site use that CAPTCHA thing? I cant remember if I needed to do that

At one point I had a system set up that moved the registration form and honeypotted and banned those that hit the default one that was only visible programatically. This got removed at some point due to an update or repairing the forums from a bad state or something.

We also have / had a captcha though it only does so much.

Boydster had a great solution but I let it fell through the cracks without eliminating it. Perhaps its worth me looking into that again too.