Bots

[Object]

Remove bots from the forums and I may stick around.

[copeg]

Stuff happens, and stuff cleaned up

Edit: thread moved to Forum updates and Feedback

[Object]

Removing bots is a simple task, why not remove them? It posses a negative perspective on the forum.

[copeg]

Removing bots is a simple task, why not remove them? It posses a negative perspective on the forum.

I'm not sure I follow. The bot's posts have been deleted and the user banned (although I contend it was not a bot). Moderators are not online 24/7 to clean up messes, we are volunteers just like yourself, and we do the best we can. What else do you suggest?

[JavaPF]

Bots? Please elaborate and share any threads we may have missed.

Forums are a massive target for spammers. You have undoubtedly experienced spam on many other forums. Being an advid forum user myself, I think this forum is one of the cleanest when it comes to spam and rubbish posts. We have provisions in place to catch bots/spammers before they posts and we always delete the ones that make it through as quickly as possible. The moderation team do an excellent job.

I'm sure your experience here will not be blighted by such things.

[Object]

I am an ex staffer and always hold the ability to return to a forum with over 250,000 members. So yes, I do have experience running forums and with crawlers. The forums bots here don't post but yet it shows 1,000 users online.. why not give the forum members a real number?

[JavaPF]

If there are bots visiting this forum, and they do not post, then I do not see what the problem is?

How could you possibly know how many of these 1000 users online are bots? You can't.
Given the popularity of these forums, I would say the majority are legitimate users.

I do not have magical powers that enable me to predict which IP addresses will be used by spammers/bots in order to block them before they even visit the site. If they do not post, then there is zero indication that they are bots anyway.

As you are probably aware, people who deploy bots or aim to spam forums use ever increasingly sophisticated methods to do so. They will hide behind hacked computers/servers and spoof their IP addresses. This makes the task of blocking them, even before they visit the site, impossible.

The second someone attempts to register, their IP address is checked against a blacklist and if flagged, they are blocked immediately. This has proven to be highly successful. As long as we stop any malicious people signing up, we have done our job.

The people who merely visit these forums, for whatever the reason, have no impact over the active members or community.

As an "ex staffer" of such a large forum, you should probably know what can and cannot be done. Plus you should sympathise with the work involved in running a forum.

This really does look like trolling to me. If this has been of such concern to you that you have had to start this thread, I can only imagine what issues you will raise in the future. If you feel you will be happier elsewhere, please go elsewhere.

[jps]

I am on this forum in and out for 18 hours a day, and I think the mods here do a good job without considering the pay/no-pay factors. Few threads go unanswered. Most are answered in a timely manner. Bad posts are moved/deleted as necessary also in a timely manner. I don't understand the hostility in this thread, but I see no major issues.

[pbrockway2]

I agree with jps. The mods are to be congratulated for curating a forum with a good and encouraging feel to it and I don't see spam sitting around for any length of time.