Homestar Runner Wiki Forum
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Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my website?
http://forum.hrwiki.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18801
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Author:  andrew_berge [ Sat Nov 12, 2011 11:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my website?

It seems the spammers are restless.
Seriously, i've never seen so much spam.

I've noticed there's only spam on the first forum, though, the General Discussion forum.
On other sites i've seen "Spam boxes" (such as on gmc.yoyogames.com), which catch all the spambots that post in the first forum.
It's essentially a fake and empty forum that is put before all the others, and only bots post there. Then you can just delete any account that posts there.

Anyway, it's a thought.

Author:  DorianGray [ Sun Nov 13, 2011 12:57 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

But I can and do deactivate any account that posts spam here anyway, so I don't really see the difference. It's not like they're hard to pick out of a crowd.

Also, moved topic to Help Desk, as it's not an H*R topic.

Author:  TwiceStyle [ Sun Nov 13, 2011 1:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

I'm not an admin, or the man neither, but this netsite's lack of posts has asploded my head.
Like, literally. I have soolnds now. This, my people, is total crap. (Not the forum. VIVA!)
Yes, you guys are prolly angry at me for overdosing the lingo, but what teh hecks?

Author:  RickTommy [ Sun Nov 13, 2011 2:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

TwiceStyle wrote:
I'm not an admin, or the man neither, but this netsite's lack of posts has asploded my head.
Like, literally. I have soolnds now. This, my people, is total crap. (Not the forum. VIVA!)
Yes, you guys are prolly angry at me for overdosing the lingo, but what teh hecks?


Uhh, what are you trying to say here? What does this have to do with the large amount of spam we just got?

On topic, though: is there any way to at least ease this spam, if not stop it? A lot of the posts this forum gets these days are spam. Also, there are many users here who, despite having not spammed yet, are obviously spammers (there are several almost sure signs of being a spammer, the most obvious one being a gibberish username).

Also, the "number of users online" has been illegitimately high for the past couple of weeks; most of the time, the vast majority of online users are either web crawlers (I'm not sure if that's the correct term) or spammers. Is there a way to edit those users out of the online list?

Author:  lu9 [ Wed Jan 04, 2012 5:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

i'm tired of that too :-|
It's so boring, it seems like they want our forum closed.
And make because they WANT.
These are just fweakin' dudes that don't know what to do, or
famous bandits and robbers!!! like bin laden

Author:  RickTommy [ Wed Jan 11, 2012 2:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

Also, could the following "users" please be banned: "MucherGreerlyTek", "Deeferellclatry", and "VEBYKAYASPAUTHEDY". All they have done for the past couple of weeks is change their info. It's obvious that they are bots that could spam at any moment.

Plus, there's a topic in General Discussion that was spammed, and even though the spammer's post is gone, it still says the last post is from the spammer.

Author:  MagicSwap [ Thu Jan 12, 2012 3:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

Might I ask why other forums do not seem to have this problem? Why was ours targeted for this? (Some content in the following sentence is from another post I made) IS it because we are on a dated or buggy system or is it because of another reason?. I get the feeling that it drives new people away. Y'Know?

Author:  lu9 [ Sun Jan 29, 2012 1:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

I CAN'T FREAKIN' HOLD IT ANYMORE!
The content in those spam are getting more ridiculous! Now they want us to watch bad stuff!
We should create a new forum!!!!

Author:  MagicSwap [ Wed Feb 01, 2012 6:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

This is probably all of the new users' response when they see all the spam on this forum

Image

Author:  TwiceStyle [ Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

Ahh, gifs. Destroying our need to talk. Wanna see my pet?
Image
What about me after a couple of cold ones?
Image
Taste the gifiness.

Author:  RickTommy [ Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

TwiceStyle wrote:
Ahh, gifs. Destroying our need to talk. Wanna see my pet?
Image
What about me after a couple of cold ones?
Image
Taste the gifiness.


This may be a forum about a humorous Web cartoon with dumb animal characters, but this is no time for jokes, man. This is a very serious issue. There has been a lot of spam recently; despite most (if not all) of it being deleted, it is still noted, and it gets in the way. I seriously think something should be done about this issue; if we get this much spam again, this forum is better off with the same fate as the Fanstuff Wiki.

In short, can we please start using words that were invented after 1900 talking about ways to either slow down this spam or stop it?

Author:  MagicSwap [ Thu Feb 02, 2012 9:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

I think that we should upgrade the forum system to a more, for lack of a better term, complex system that spammers cannot get through.

A rehost may help too, but then the spammers may just lock on to a new IP.

So is a forum upgrade possible? Can we get some other things to plug security holes?

Author:  MagicSwap [ Sat Feb 11, 2012 8:19 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

Alright, so I looked up some more information on forum spam and prevention. Here is a quote from the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_spam#Spam_prevention)

Wikipedia wrote:
Registration control:
Some forums employ CAPTCHA (visual confirmation) routines on their registration pages to prevent spambots carrying out automated registrations. Simple CAPTCHA systems which display alphanumeric characters have proven vulnerable to optical character recognition software but those that scramble the characters appear to be far more effective.
Alternative is Textual Confirmation, where the user answers one or more random questions to prove he/she is not a spambot.
Forums have a feature where they send an e-mail to users who registered, either containing the password used to login or an activation code/link.
Some forums have required registration approval where the administrator has to approve accounts.
Authoritative voice: Using an external filtering service, such as Akismet, to get a verdict if the data is spam or not.
Posting limits: Limit posting to registered users and/or require that the user pass a CAPTCHA test before posting.
Registration restrictions: Applying careful restrictions can seriously impact bogus and spambot registrations. One approach consists in the denial of registration from certain domains that are a major source of spambots, or even domain extensions such as .ru, .br, .biz. Another, more labor-intensive, consists in manual examination of new registrants. This examination looks at several indicators. First, spambots often delay email confirmation by several hours, while humans will confirm promptly. Second, spambots will tend to create user names that are unique, and unlikely to already be used in the forum, preferring "John84731" or "JohnbassKeepsie" to the much more common "John." Third, using a search engine to investigate, one finds hundreds, if not thousands of profiles using the spambot login name, sometimes with the diagnostic spam post, or "banned" label.
Changing technical details of the forum software to confuse bots — for example, changing "agreed=true" to "mode=agreed" in the registration page of phpBB.
Block posts or registrations that contain certain blacklisted words.
Be wary of IPs used by untrusted posters (anonymous posts or newly registered users). A useful technique for proactive detection of well-known spammer proxies is to query a search engine for this IP. It will show up on pages that specialize in the listing of proxies.
Some forums also have their own "spam subforums" to direct spam off their main site.
Some forums have the signature option disabled


Maybe some of those will prove of some use in the "fight" agaisnt spam.

Author:  SlenderMan [ Sun Feb 12, 2012 11:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

MagicSwap wrote:
Alright, so I looked up some more information on forum spam and prevention. Here is a quote from the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_spam#Spam_prevention)

Wikipedia wrote:
Registration control:
Some forums employ CAPTCHA (visual confirmation) routines on their registration pages to prevent spambots carrying out automated registrations. Simple CAPTCHA systems which display alphanumeric characters have proven vulnerable to optical character recognition software but those that scramble the characters appear to be far more effective.
Alternative is Textual Confirmation, where the user answers one or more random questions to prove he/she is not a spambot.
Forums have a feature where they send an e-mail to users who registered, either containing the password used to login or an activation code/link.
Some forums have required registration approval where the administrator has to approve accounts.
Authoritative voice: Using an external filtering service, such as Akismet, to get a verdict if the data is spam or not.
Posting limits: Limit posting to registered users and/or require that the user pass a CAPTCHA test before posting.
Registration restrictions: Applying careful restrictions can seriously impact bogus and spambot registrations. One approach consists in the denial of registration from certain domains that are a major source of spambots, or even domain extensions such as .ru, .br, .biz. Another, more labor-intensive, consists in manual examination of new registrants. This examination looks at several indicators. First, spambots often delay email confirmation by several hours, while humans will confirm promptly. Second, spambots will tend to create user names that are unique, and unlikely to already be used in the forum, preferring "John84731" or "JohnbassKeepsie" to the much more common "John." Third, using a search engine to investigate, one finds hundreds, if not thousands of profiles using the spambot login name, sometimes with the diagnostic spam post, or "banned" label.
Changing technical details of the forum software to confuse bots — for example, changing "agreed=true" to "mode=agreed" in the registration page of phpBB.
Block posts or registrations that contain certain blacklisted words.
Be wary of IPs used by untrusted posters (anonymous posts or newly registered users). A useful technique for proactive detection of well-known spammer proxies is to query a search engine for this IP. It will show up on pages that specialize in the listing of proxies.
Some forums also have their own "spam subforums" to direct spam off their main site.
Some forums have the signature option disabled


Maybe some of those will prove of some use in the "fight" agaisnt spam.

Hmm, that is certainly interesting information. I do think the spam here is driving any new people away. I think those solutions are going to hopefully do something.

Author:  DorianGray [ Tue Feb 14, 2012 5:53 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

I'd more blame the fact that, without any new content the community is all but dead, and that's why there are few new users. It seems much more likely than any temporary spam.

Author:  StrongRad [ Fri Nov 09, 2012 7:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

I'm deleting spam when I see it, but I don't have my admin powers anymore, so I can't block the spambots or their IPs

Author:  AgentSeethroo [ Fri Nov 09, 2012 11:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

As soon as someone reinstates my powers, I'll help out.

Author:  StrongRad [ Sun Nov 11, 2012 7:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

AgentSeethroo wrote:
As soon as someone reinstates my powers, I'll help out.

Is there anyone with power left?

Author:  AgentSeethroo [ Sun Nov 11, 2012 8:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

Maybe this dude right here:http://forum.hrwiki.org/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=6. It says he was on the forum on 10/25.

And I'm not sure if Jones still has his banhammer activated, either.

Author:  TheTinyGiant [ Fri Dec 07, 2012 2:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

Wow, I remember SeeThroo from the old days, being the subject of the phrase "There's no one driving that car!! ARRRGGGBLBLBL!!"

Whatever happened, the bots seem to be gone, at least for now. So I just want to say thank you to whomever that was.

Author:  PlaysetsandToysBuyer [ Tue Dec 11, 2012 2:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

Agreed. Kudos to whoever brought the spam down to a reasonable level. Now if only we could think of some Homestar-related threads that were interesting enough to start a lively, somewhat-frequently-updated conversation...

Author:  TwiceStyle [ Thu Feb 21, 2013 3:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Ummmm... what's going on here? What happened to my websi

TwiceStyle wrote:
Ahh, gifs. Destroying our need to talk. Wanna see my pet?
Image
What about me after a couple of cold ones?
Image
Taste the gifiness.

Holy crapcakes... was I really that annoying back then?

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