CAPTCHA FOR POSTS?

I hate captchas mostly because I use a non-standard browser that always feels the need to do like five of them before it goes through. (I assume Google's captchas don't want non-chrome browsers on the internet)

Maybe the captcha is omitted for users with >100 makerscore or something?

We usually get about 100 bots or so per day trying to get on the site. One or two get through. Our security measures are pretty good in that regard but it's hard to combat actual people doing stuff. As it stands we have a forced slow-down on new users posting so that bots don't just spam the site if they do make it through.

Having an MS amount remove some security would be a nice idea - maybe asking new people to post in the introduction forums and getting a badge worth 50MS if they do that removes captcha and post slow-down is an idea?

Throw down a few ideas you guys, if you have them. Maybe it'll twig something useable.

I'm pretty sure there is a honeypot in place here already. After all the fact is as Libby says, we catch about 95% of all the spammers. I feel, considering the fact that some of the spammers that do get through edit spam into their posts sometimes days after the initial (seemingly innocent) post, that most of the things that do get through are done by actual people by now.

Honestly, I'm with Shinan thinking that we catch the bots. It seems the ones that make it through have a more human touch to them, being that they edit posts. Maybe we should lock new members from editing posts while on probation? Then they'd just put links in posts in the first case, I guess.

I don't think captcha's are going to stop the ones that come through already because they already made it through captcha's to post in the first place. Image captcha's at that.

I'm not sure if locking out the ability to edit one's own posts in regards to new users is the right move. I feel that would ultimately encourage double-posting from those users, when the preference is to use the edit function.

I'm also not sure if it's wise to automatically remove links on posts from new users. That may stop some bots, but, I'm having a lot of trouble imagining how such a system would be able to tell between a spam-link that should be edited out versus a more legit link to, say, their game's website on RMW, the game's Steam page, perhaps an external walkthrough, an external FAQ, or what-have-you.

There's really no easy way to tell unless they post, and some people just don't bother posting. Some people are just here to download games or sign up to a site just in case they need to post/want to put up their game/etc.


The thing is that our member list shows only the usernames, whilst the autoban list shows only the email addresses used, so while I could correlate through looking manually at each and every person who signed up in the past day, there's about 100 of them to do that for which would take me at least an hour, if not more, to check just to answer this question.

There's no easy way to check the member list, either. We do have an easy way to check users in general and search for a specific user, but the list is in alphabetical order, not by date. I can find the dated version by going through another part of the site but that doesn't show what dates they joined, it's just in order of date joined, so I'd also have to check each one manually to find the cut-off for a day of people joining.

If I have a spare hour I'll give it a shot to get a general idea, though. Just... it's not something that can be easily checked. >.<;

Alternate solution to forum spambots. (example outside of rmn)

New members are required to know a set password to join the forums.
To find that password, new users can ask for it over the discord channel.
Password may be changed on a necessary basis. (if spam got through)