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dh forum continuingly getting the chinese virus

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
Staff member
May 23, 2002
21,031
5,921
borcester rhymes
yeah I can't do shit. Blame @binary visions

I just span the bammers, but then they reinvent and attack again. Maybe we can block all chinese characters or something? i dunno. Not a lot of madnarin conversationalists on this forum.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
@kidwoo Unfortunately, there's no easy setting of "allow users under X posts to only post X per day." Believe it or not, if there were a super easy solve here I would have already applied it.

Usergroups can't have flood limits applied to them individually, so I can't dump users into a monitored group and then auto-promote them out. I could crank the flood limits way down and exempt regular users from them entirely, but that just means if a spammer got out of their holding pen they'd have no limits on how much they could spam.

The user discouragement system has a lever for creating longer waits between posts, but can't be applied to entire usergroups.

There are plugins to help with this, but my experience with extensively relying on plugins has been terrible because they lose support and then you get stuck on old versions.

I have been tweaking some regex to try and filter these but had to capture some posts in order to generate it.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
My quick testing is showing that my new RegEx is successfully capturing these kinds of posts into the Approval queue. Not sure if this will fix everything but it should help.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
I'm on some v bulletin sites that don't let you start threads until you have 5 non initiating posts. Figured that might be something in the host template.
I can, but I really don't like that from a user perspective, because it makes it impossible for someone to sign up and ask for help, and makes them post a bunch of garbage first.
 

Kevin

Turbo Monkey
I can, but I really don't like that from a user perspective, because it makes it impossible for someone to sign up and ask for help, and makes them post a bunch of garbage first.
I havent seen a new user around these parts for years and these bots are super annoying.

All of us are having to deal with this BS everyday, having to “ignore” a list of bots before we start browsing teh Monkey.
Surely thats not very user friendly at all either and concerns an exponential amount more users.
Im sure that one new user a year will be fine with not being able to start threads until they reach 5 posts if that means solving this Bot problem?
 

StiHacka

Compensating for something
Jan 4, 2013
21,560
12,504
In hell. Welcome!
May I suggest that we allow those who designed and built this site to operate and maintain it? Second guessing seems less than helpful.
This is not exactly rocket science and such solutions helped with spammers infestation at other forums. I don't see how suggesting solutions is a bad thing.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
I understand the annoyances.

Currently, I am choosing to address the bot problem directly rather than impacting new users. @Kevin since you don't get to see the stats, you probably don't know that we have dozens of new users with 1-5 posts and a recent registration date and most of them were looking for information or help. I am not currently not planning on being a barrier to someone who wants to sign up here to ask a question.

Also, I think that maybe we should keep this in perspective. While this latest swarm of Chinese bots has been annoying, generally speaking the spammers get caught in the filters as they are supposed to, I tweak the filters to match when some slip through, and we go on with our day. This was more of a challenge because, well, I don't know Chinese so it's harder for me to pluck out common words and phrases to filter on, and the spammers weren't using any other techniques like images or links.
 

Kevin

Turbo Monkey
I understand the annoyances.

Currently, I am choosing to address the bot problem directly rather than impacting new users. @Kevin since you don't get to see the stats, you probably don't know that we have dozens of new users with 1-5 posts and a recent registration date and most of them were looking for information or help. I am not currently not planning on being a barrier to someone who wants to sign up here to ask a question.

Also, I think that maybe we should keep this in perspective. While this latest swarm of Chinese bots has been annoying, generally speaking the spammers get caught in the filters as they are supposed to, I tweak the filters to match when some slip through, and we go on with our day. This was more of a challenge because, well, I don't know Chinese so it's harder for me to pluck out common words and phrases to filter on, and the spammers weren't using any other techniques like images or links.
That does surprise me a little, but I figured new members wanting to actually contribute to the community would understand.
That way were not all “suffering” for a few people who just want a bit of help with their problem and then bail.

I fully understand your pov though and Im not saying youre doing a bad job or anything.
I realize theres more factors at hand than what I see as an end user.

Just trying to help and maybe voice the opinion of the community.
Keep up the good work :cheers:
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
Just trying to help and maybe voice the opinion of the community
Yep, I get it. You guys are within your rights to be annoyed. I'm just giving context and my rationale.

And since this is not a democracy, I will continue to do as I please and send the secret police after everyone who disagrees with me. :butcher:
 

StiHacka

Compensating for something
Jan 4, 2013
21,560
12,504
In hell. Welcome!
How many of these "new members" actually like gladiator movies?
Y not give them a newbs thread to ask questions and unlock then when they pass the Turing test?
 

Jm_

sled dog's bollocks
Jan 14, 2002
18,852
9,557
AK
Well I for one welcome our new Chinese Triad overlords.
 
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velocipedist

Lubrication Sensei
Jul 11, 2006
559
702
Rainbow City Alabama
try filtering

大学

it is the Chinese/Japanese for university. Doubtful that anything legitimate will be caught, and most all of these seem to be hawking degrees.

I understand the annoyances.

Currently, I am choosing to address the bot problem directly rather than impacting new users. @Kevin since you don't get to see the stats, you probably don't know that we have dozens of new users with 1-5 posts and a recent registration date and most of them were looking for information or help. I am not currently not planning on being a barrier to someone who wants to sign up here to ask a question.

Also, I think that maybe we should keep this in perspective. While this latest swarm of Chinese bots has been annoying, generally speaking the spammers get caught in the filters as they are supposed to, I tweak the filters to match when some slip through, and we go on with our day. This was more of a challenge because, well, I don't know Chinese so it's harder for me to pluck out common words and phrases to filter on, and the spammers weren't using any other techniques like images or links.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,092
1,132
NC
try filtering

大学

it is the Chinese/Japanese for university. Doubtful that anything legitimate will be caught, and most all of these seem to be hawking degrees.
I had already done that, but for some reason it wasn't correctly pattern-matching.
 

jstuhlman

bagpipe wanker
Dec 3, 2009
16,624
12,915
Cackalacka du Nord
I usually pick one random profile on the site per day to do that with anyway but the problem with these is that they only last about 12 hours.

Gotta be quick on the draw. And by draw I mean pull your wiener out.
wait, we're supposed to DRAW our dicks and then send a pic of that? dammit, i've been doing it all wrong.