IMPORTANT: User Signatures

I know ...

 

IMHO - There's a better way of handling this.

Put all existing posters with tenure in a different user group that requires admin approval to join. Give this group the ability to have unlimited sig access.

Put all new accounts that join into a restricted user group that has no ability to do anything except post with the standard delay. Once you hit some figure that's a bit high (say 50 -100 posts) move them to the next group automatically. Otherwise, when an admin sees a poster that consistently is helpful, put them in the group manually (I'd actually recommend the latter.)

Turn on the ability to track IP per poster, when you get spam, IP ban it. I find that most Indian spammers use proxy servers so it may not help much, but if you're getting hit it's probably more organized than you give it credit for and able to be handled this way.

Reason I feel this way: As a person who's spent his career in service to user populations and groups, I feel you don't want to make the community less functional for the people who make the site a place to visit in the first place.

As an aside and being honest, I was quite annoyed when my account got dropped in the db cleaning and almost opted to walk away at that time. Losing signatures makes the entire site that much less functional and makes determining who the knowledgeable posters are that much harder. (as you've already stated)

If I can help at all I'll gladly do so (offering more to help the admins understand that I'm not bitching randomly against a system without offering to help) but I feel you've probably got more than enough tech-fu to handle the situation yourselves.

Best,
Al

 

We have some pretty sophisticated anti-spam efforts already implemented, which is one of the reasons we manage to stay pretty spam free, and the rest of what you've suggested is actually almost exactly what the plan is to solve the problem. It's just a matter of taking the time to do it (and do it correctly, so I don't inadvertently delete people as I did before.)

The inadvertent deletion of legitimate accounts should not have happened; it was a function of my being really tired when I did it and not paying close enough attention. When one is editing SQL tables, it is really easy to make a simple mistake and have a lot go wrong I don't plan on editing database tables when I'm tired in the future.

But the sigs won't go away... clearly they are important to the community users than perhaps I recognized. We'll just find other way to deal with the spammers. And I've changed the setting back so there should be plenty of space for lengthy signatures now. Still no HTML or BB code, but at least you can have plenty of room for text.

 

Sorry for the extra work Chip, but I enjoy a spam-free site. Thanks for all your effort.

I vote for a group of those over 500 posts.

 

My suggestion: make a backup first.

 

I think min{my current # of posts} sounds like the optimal number.

 

I wish I could have the post number back to my original screen name. ( I have been around these parts since 2004). I still can not access my original screen name. Sigh.

 

There was one made before the deletion. (There are regular ones occurring as well), but the inadvertent deletions occurred at the point at which 95% of the (correct) deletions that needed to be made had already been done. So it was a choice of losing a couple of hours worth of rather tedious work (and postings that had occurred in the hours since the backup), or ask several people to create new accounts.

I opted for what I felt was the lesser of two evils.

 

PM me with your original screenname and your approximate post count and I can fix it for you.

 

Yes sir. Sending you a PM now.

 

If you tell him 10,000,000, we'll all know you are lying.

 

I'd never suggest this board be like any other board, but I'm part of a super-busy forum at www (dot) allnurses (dot) com. You can take a look at the format. It has a lot of users, around 5000 live at any given moment, and I have NEVER seen a single spam post-ever!
When I joined, it was a while before I could post without mod approval, not sure of a number, but around 50 posts I think. Also, the sig line and emotion icons are tied to membership too. As a newbie you get a simple sig line in basic font, the choice of a few smiley guys,and a few little optional icon things (female/male, etc) to display by your screen name. The cool stuff - long siggy lines- links-animated smileys- comes after extensive posting and long-term membership.
I'm sure there are limits within the platform here, just tossing out what I have observed elsewhere. Also, I'm here with or without a sig line, but I'm thankful that the mods consider our opinions on stuff like this.

 

No kidding. I was about to get upset as I have been a member for a while but do not rack up the post count that others do.

Go by years on the board, not by post count!!!

Guess I had better increase my bloviation to reading ratio.

 

LOL. Not even close to that number. LOL

 

I find the long sig allowance to be annoying personally. Changing it to allow a drop down box instead, where people can list their Clep, etc. completed, would be a lot better and only require a few lines of sig space.

Random example via Google:

http://www.reptileforums.co.uk/forums/forum-help-suggestions-news/68898-how-signature-drop-down-box.html

 

Maybe. At least then people wouldn't be able to put urls advertising other sites in their signature like you did above.

 

That would make you more senior than me and my post ratio is much higher than yours. This methodology simply will not do.

Yep. And with this post, my post count just went up.

 

You can opt to not view signature lines. It's an option in the User CP.

 

How would that help? Some spammer could make umpteen zillion posts his first day and have a high ppd ratio.