Adrian_Thompson
Adrian_Thompson Dork
10/20/11 7:20 a.m.

If GRM doesn't want to go to closed registration, then how about adding some questions as part of the sign up process? 1. What is THE car 2. What is a Canoe 3. What is What is the title of next years challenge

One word answers that anyone who has been looking at the board for 5 minutes should be able to figure out. Well, maybe it will be so successful that #2 will have to be changed!

N Sperlo
N Sperlo Dork
10/20/11 7:56 a.m.

I wouldn't have known any of those when I joined.

Hocrest
Hocrest HalfDork
10/20/11 8:05 a.m.
N Sperlo wrote: I wouldn't have known any of those when I joined.

+1

Maybe #3, but it took a month or two to figure out 1 and 2.

The0retical
The0retical New Reader
10/20/11 8:12 a.m.

There's other ones besides annoying CAPTCHA. Some sites use pictures with things like "Select the Orange" or for GRM flavor "Select the gen I Miata"

Sky_Render
Sky_Render New Reader
10/20/11 8:15 a.m.
The0retical wrote: There's other ones besides annoying CAPTCHA. Some sites use pictures with things like "Select the Orange" or for GRM flavor "Select the gen I Miata"

I like this better.

I got no idea what a "canoe" is, and as far as I'm concerned THE car is my 2011 Mustang 5.0.

Adrian_Thompson
Adrian_Thompson Dork
10/20/11 8:30 a.m.

All good points. I hate CAPTCHA's, they're so good it nrmaly takes me a couple of attempts before I can get one right, and last time I checked I was a real human.

How about multiple choice then?

Tom Heath
Tom Heath Web Manager
10/20/11 8:36 a.m.

We've got plans in place for new user registration changes. It's the rest of the site that needs to be finished...

Patience, please. We're trying to get the new CMS site off the ground in the next 12-72 hours. The idea is to evaluate those changes and find ways to break it (in a lower population density environment) before unleashing these changes on the GRM site.

New users will have to endure the CAPTCHA challenge. Existing users won't(shouldn't) notice any difference at all.

4cylndrfury
4cylndrfury SuperDork
10/20/11 8:36 a.m.

Do they still ask who the publisher is and you have to mention Margies husbands real name?

ReverendDexter
ReverendDexter SuperDork
10/20/11 8:39 a.m.

Any single word answer questions or multiple choice questions will VERY quickly get figured out by bots. That's why captchas are good: they're different every single time.

Personally, I have no issue with captchas, and with something like reCaptcha, you're helping to translate old books.

There's always a "gimme another one" button on the side of a Captcha if you have no freakin' clue what you're looking at, the most I've ever had to hit that was twice.

And really, if it was just for sign-up, it would affect all of us exactly no times.

carguy123
carguy123 SuperDork
10/20/11 8:57 a.m.

There are many versions of Captcha like products and I like all of them better than Captcha.

Captcha needs to be reset a dozen times before you can get a set of figures you can read 100% accurately.

Duke
Duke SuperDork
10/20/11 9:04 a.m.

I don't really understand the hysteria over spam. It's annoying, yes. You see one, you click the little Exclamation Point button, the next staff member to come along deletes it. No heroics required.

donalson
donalson SuperDork
10/20/11 9:10 a.m.

Captcha makes sense to me for security... and I had no idea about the re captcha thing being translating old books and stuff... a quick look at I have few issues with re-captcha then any other that I tend to use... not that I have tons of issues with them... but when I was working tech support older folks had to run though them a few times to get them

The0retical
The0retical New Reader
10/20/11 9:11 a.m.
Duke wrote: I don't really understand the hysteria over spam. It's annoying, yes. You see one, you click the little Exclamation Point button, the next staff member to come along deletes it. No heroics required.

Having helped moderated small sites from my geekier MMO days, you would be surprised how fast it piles up. Even with a moderate level of CAPTCHA setup there were 30 or 40 threads a day that you need to review to ensure that it was spam then delete. We needed to jack up the CAPTHCA threshold pretty high to get around some of the more advanced bots which made it annoying for guild applicants.

I can't even imagine how time consuming a larger site with several thousand members could be. Though GRM is one of the more troll free boards I've had the pleasure of participating on.

Duke
Duke SuperDork
10/20/11 9:18 a.m.

I've been an admin on a forum with over 125,000 members and millions of posts. I know how quickly it can stack up. What I'm referring to is here, where we are really not terribly troubled by it, yet people keep leaning on the staff to solve the problem, when in my eyes, it's not a huge issue.

N Sperlo
N Sperlo Dork
10/20/11 9:21 a.m.
Duke wrote: I've been an admin on a forum with over 125,000 members and millions of posts. I know how quickly it can stack up. What I'm referring to is here, where we are really not terribly troubled by it, yet people keep leaning on the staff to solve the problem, whn in my eyes, it's not a huge issue.

kind of what I'm thinkin.

slefain
slefain SuperDork
10/20/11 9:32 a.m.
4cylndrfury wrote: Do they still ask who the publisher is and you have to mention Margies husbands real name?

They call me.......Tim.

Tom Heath
Tom Heath Web Manager
10/20/11 9:34 a.m.
Duke wrote: I've been an admin on a forum with over 125,000 members and millions of posts. I know how quickly it can stack up. What I'm referring to is here, where we are really not terribly troubled by it, yet people keep leaning on the staff to solve the problem, when in my eyes, it's not a huge issue.

I appreciate this attitude. Generally, it's more of an annoyance but sometimes they try to implement goofy scripts that can cause other troubles with the site as a whole.

The0retical
The0retical New Reader
10/20/11 10:58 a.m.
Duke wrote: I've been an admin on a forum with over 125,000 members and millions of posts. I know how quickly it can stack up. What I'm referring to is here, where we are really not terribly troubled by it, yet people keep leaning on the staff to solve the problem, when in my eyes, it's not a huge issue.

Oh granted if it's not broke don't fix it. Just making a general observation, there's no point in making admins do all the work to design a script or implement a complex registration scheme (time == money and I like an excellent publication) if all that needs to be done is remove a dozen or two threads requiring a couple minutes it isn't a big deal. When you end up with a gross of threads to delete every day some proactive thinking may be in order. Fortunately it isn't at that point yet (the unpaid intern can still handle it )

Tom Heath
Tom Heath Web Manager
10/20/11 11:09 a.m.

We are currently intern-less, but killing spam posts doesn't suck up an incredible amount of time. A systemic solution is coming soon, so there's really not a lot to argue about.

Appleseed
Appleseed SuperDork
10/20/11 2:15 p.m.

But if you do that, what will we waste our smarmy, sarcasm filled canoe comments on?

wbjones
wbjones SuperDork
10/21/11 4:54 a.m.

just when we thought we were safe here comes an shiny happy person named zibiwen

4cylndrfury
4cylndrfury SuperDork
10/21/11 7:46 a.m.

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