What is with the post verification???

Community Playground General Discussions
1

What is the necessity of such a cumbersome verification process?

Do I REALLY have to:

  1. Type in a random series of letters
  2. Spell “KANGAROO” backwards (lower case)
  3. Write the 2nd, sixth and last letter of the word ‘enciclopedia’ (no separator)
  4. Which is the country with the most people?(lower case)

Sorry for the rant, but I’ve never had to deal with such a cumbersome process to post messages.

2

Yes it is necessary. It helps prevent / slow down the spam on the forum and has worked for many years. The verification will go away after a set amount of posts. This has been brought up many times on the forum this same answer would have been given to you using the search function on the forum.

  • Garrett
3

I am fairly new and was wondering the same. Totally understand it and think it is a smart approach. At another board I frequent the owner refuses to put any spam countermeasures in place. He claims even with the minimal registration process in place (input data, captcha, then click link on confirmation email) people have a hard time and keep emailing him asking how to easily register. Over thre we see at least 20-25 daily spams promoting illegal movies sites that persist until a mod sees them.

Some people just love the least resistance path. Kudos to the team here for keeping the house clean.

4

I believe the post count to have verification to go away is about 25 posts. We have other counter measures in place, but verification does seem to help or at least slow things down. We try our best to keep the forum as clean as possible.

  • Garrett
5

I understand the need, but if its 25 posts that seems quite high.

6

Hi all,

Here is a screenshot from anti-spam settings, the limit is 5 not 25.

Bests,

  • Andrei -
7

I agree, it’s a pain, especially since captchas are very hard for me and normally take me multiple attempts to get correct.
Thankfully, it’s only for 5 posts.

8

Good to know, so after this post I should not have to suffer them again! 8)

I’m tired of spelling Kangaroo backwards!

9

It was enough to make me not want to be part of the forum. Then I realized it was only 5 posts.

Still seems unnecessary, but at least it goes away soon. They should probably make that a little more clear.

10

[quote=“NickTheGreat, post:9, topic:181131”]It was enough to make me not want to be part of the forum. Then I realized it was only 5 posts.

Still seems unnecessary, but at least it goes away soon. They should probably make that a little more clear.[/quote]
It is very necessary, the forums turn to crap whenever one of those filthy spammers gets in.

As for disclosing the number to people, I don’t think it is beneficial to tell the spammers to set their counters to 5. Even if a small few people don’t stick around, it’s better than the dozens of resurrected threads(from years ago) full of spam.

Some of them create accounts and let the sit for a month or more before launching the crap flood. A clear sign of it being an automated system.

Just my 2 cents.

11

@ Z-Waver

As for disclosing the number to people, I don't think it is beneficial to tell the spammers to set their counters to 5.

All new post from a new user must be approved, so if a new wave of spammers will appear, we will be aware of that and further measures can be taken. They will never reach post limit that will make verifications disappear.

Bests,

  • Andrei -
12

[quote=“Z-Waver, post:10, topic:181131”]It is very necessary, the forums turn to crap whenever one of those filthy spammers gets in.

As for disclosing the number to people, I don’t think it is beneficial to tell the spammers to set their counters to 5. Even if a small few people don’t stick around, it’s better than the dozens of resurrected threads(from years ago) full of spam.

Some of them create accounts and let the sit for a month or more before launching the crap flood. A clear sign of it being an automated system.

Just my 2 cents.[/quote]

Fair enough. I’m on dozens of other forums and never seen that before. Maybe don’t tell the exact count, but letting new members know that the verification goes away later.

13

We do, but people don’t read the General FAQ, it’s a sticky post at the top of this area.

New User SPAM control, these restrictions lift with the tenure of the user:

[ul][li]No hyperlink posting[/li]
[li]Post-based CAPTCHA[/li]
[li]Restricted boards[/li]
[li]No PM capability[/li][/ul]

SMF doesn’t provide us with finer-grained publication options than that, but Sticky FAQ’s are fairly standard on most boards that I’ve used.

14

There was ton of spam on here before they implemented this setting, it wasn’t just an arbitrary decision. It’s worth it.

15

And you’d be amazed at the number of people that enter spam manually (and the correct captcha) so a human review must be used to validate firsts posts. And a few are still trying a couple of times every day (register new account, post message) even after weeks of blocking all their accounts and removing the messages.

The is no perfect solution to this problem so between fast and reliable the later was chosen.

Vlad