Damn spam bots!!

[The One Freeman]

Originally Posted by jyuichi

I think he means the country's government (eg. Chinese government) it's self was doing the spying which makes it very much that country's fault.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...-by-china.html

Wonder why they would bother doing it to Germany...it's not like they are about to go out and conquer Asia or something...

because the us is not the only good country. most of the new inventions in technics in europa come from germany. look the the highspeed trains in china. they are all build from german companies and are based on german knowledge.

the chinese companies copy the trains and nobody say anything because china is not listening to the european union. in fact china isn't even listening to the us "threads".

its all about industry espionage.

[The One Freeman]

Heh...espionage...

[zalas]

Off Topic The One Freeman: Sorry to be so blunt, but while your signature animation is pretty hilarious, it's starting to get really old when I see it on every single post you have. Since it doesn't really have much to do with the general topic of discussion and since your signature is often several times larger than your posts, would you mind trimming it?

[The One Freeman]

Actually I was planning on changing it today.

[Saya]

What's the point of not disabling anonymous posting? The stupidity of the spam threads by far outweighs the occasional funny Engrish in them. I'm not especially active here as anything but a lurker, and all the Chinese foot porn doesn't really make it more interesting.

[The One Freeman]

I don't get it either, something that has to do with not forcing people to register I think...

Hell, I thought that turtle-shelling all the defenses was a good idea.

Originally Posted by Saya

What's the point of not disabling anonymous posting? The stupidity of the spam threads by far outweighs the occasional funny Engrish in them. I'm not especially active here as anything but a lurker, and all the Chinese foot porn doesn't really make it more interesting.

Read FAQ?

Originally Posted by Gaogaostegosaurus

Why not disable guest posting?
From time to time people point out that most spammers and trolls are posting as guests, and suggest that disabling guest posting might get rid of them. This will never happen.

Registration is not a barrier to anyone who is determined to post. A troll can troll just as easily with a throwaway account, and spammers can and do register with ease - in fact, these days the vast majority of spam on this forum is in the form of spambots registering accounts!

What registration does discourage is the kind of passing visitor who stumbles upon a thread s/he wishes to comment on in a forum s/he has no particular intention of frequenting regularly. I want those comments, and forcing people to sign up for accounts they don't want is not the way to get them.

The idea behind it is one that has been a part of this forum since it was still Haeleth's Gemot, and is based around that of 2ch. Basically, with a lot of forums, you will find people who encounter them and find them interesting, and as such wish to join in the discussion, but they also find that often said forum requires registration, or god forbid admin approval, before they can post. This merely serves to discourage them from joining the forum and posting and contributing to the discussion. This is also quite frequently more true for the older generations of people, who perhaps are well versed in knowledge, and contributions, but don't feel like wasting their time with a forum in the sense that it is usually found today. The reason we allow anonymous posting is to encourage those types of contributive posts that would never be found on a forum requiring registration.

That said, we have grown into a much larger forum since back then. So it may finally be time to rethink our policy a little, as the spam seems to have gotten out of the admin's control even.

[Saya]

Originally Posted by kouryuu

Read FAQ?
<...>
That said, we have grown into a much larger forum since back then. So it may finally be time to rethink our policy a little, as the spam seems to have gotten out of the admin's control even.

Right, it's been half a year since I read that, after all. Still ain't convinced that it's worth the craploads of spam, which definitely might cause more people to back off instead of commenting something as a unregistered user, but it's not my forum, so eh.

What about visual confirmation or a CAPTCHA for anonymous posting? It doesn't require registration and is very little of a bother. I'm sure there's modifications of that sort available for vBulletin.

[The One Freeman]

Originally Posted by kouryuu

or god forbid admin approval, before they can post

Well, that would be a last resort type thing, just incase of hacking activity right? (For this forum specifically)

whoa, the first 1.5 pages is almost all spam...

Misu will never disable anonymous posting.
I would however at this point not really care if there was a captcha.