nesdev.com

This is how I feel a little bit. It is a solution but it seems a little bit extreme. It could fix the spam problem but it may create some too:

- You have to re-create your account (I guess). What happen if an old member's account from a user that is not active at the moment is taken over by a new user?
- You cannot import the content 100% because it's a custom solution
- You cannot continue existing threads
- The community could becomes fragmented

etc

It's a nice solution but not the appropriate one but at least your intentions are good like I said.

Some time we have to figure out how to fix the current issue and not "tearing the house down" just because it seems the easiest solution. There is always consequences to restart from the ground up.

This is my person opinion, people don't have to agree with it.

By the way Membler, who can update that main page? "Updated in 2005" seems so wrong. We should update that page more often. This is how we find the forum and everything, it should be more active than that.

Hey Xkeeper:
How do you know that IP packets with forged address won't trigger the registration "IP ban me" feature?

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Here come the fortune cookies! Here come the fortune cookies! They're wearing paper hats!

Roth found a mod that he'd used before, and we have that working now. So anyone who tries to register an account, and fills out any of the info fields (url, interests, etc.) will be stopped from registering. You fill out those info field after registering (if you want).

Hopefully this will stop enough of the spammers.

Re: password IP-banning: That's actually just an empty threat to scare newbies into not using them There actually hasn't been anybody banned for using one in quite some time (last one circa about mid-2007, likely even earlier)
Not only that, but I'm not really sure you can forge $_SERVER[REMOTE_ADDR].


With time and access, this could all be solved.

For "taken over", I haven't ever encountered it being a serious problem. Those who do have it happen (on rare occasions) are usually revealed by others or forced to have a name change.


I know that moves can be fragmenting (as I said, I've observed it several times, none of which were planned). But as long as it's a smooth and well-handled transition, it can go well.

As I said prior, I think it would be nice to move somewhere where the administration is actually active more often than once every few weeks, but...

Agree 100% with everything here.


If some responsibilities can be delegated, a move is unnecessary.

Proxies. Residential dynamic IP addresses.


For example, open one forum on the old board for users to post something that authenticates their account on the new board.

Test if common ports are open for the anonymous ones, eg 8080, etc.

Another method would be to fetch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:$_SERVER[$REMOTE_ADDR] (1), and if "proxy" is found in the result, it's probably a proxy. Flag it for manual approval.

This would only be done during registration one time, of course.



/20 - /26 subnet mask. Not enough users here to worry about two with the same local town ISP.

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I believe Tor also has a way to test for its exit points.

I see your point though. It's better not to get into an unwinnable game of cat and mouse. Just raise the difficulty of registration, eg ~24 hour delay before a moderator manually approves a new account. Eg annoy them away.

Honestly though, at least the spam posts are somewhat comprehensible. Which is more than I can say for certain other accounts here ...

Only my account can upload it. It does suck that I haven't maintained it. What's even worse is my contact email address on there is extremely ancient and spam-filled (14 years or so? it still works but I almost never check it). I think it's because I was most enthusiastic about organizing it all while I was still learning the ropes. When I got better at programming I wanted to do that more, but once I started writing soft+hard+firmware (heh), I about quit writing http. Anyways it seemed like the site (through the forum) had a life of it's own.

The problem is, as Xkeeper mentioned before, the only link to the forums from the main page is practically invisible. Most legitimate new members likely find them via either a Google search or a link from another site.

At the very least, you should add a note to the main page stating that it's basically an archive, and provide visible links to both the forums and the wiki.

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- BMF
RuSteD LOgIc

I see how you feel about it.

Maybe you should ask someone to maintain the main page and give it back to you for the updating it? That way you don't have to worry about html coding and content, just the uploading and approval part.

At least jargon managed to find us.

And yeah the main page should be updated. Just all dead links (re)moved (that's about 80% of the links over there), and new links added to recent releases in NESdev communauty, especially the wiki and the bootgod database.

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Life is complex: it has both real and imaginary components.

I do have a volunteer who will go through and remove the dead links.. that will be a start. Then we can start adding new stuff.

I know it sounds simple to do to everyone, but my time is limited and I'm putting most of my NESdev time into work on Garage Cart #2. So any and all help is appreciated, I'll let everyone know when we're ready to move forward.

Great to hear that we have some volunteer to update the main page.

I understand how you feel. If you have a full time job and a family, it's hard to put time for your hobbies. I'm lucky when I can put 1h per day on it!

If there a small thing I can help with, I'll be more than happy to do it. But my time is limited too.

Hey, these days I haven't seen any spam yet... mod or spam protection getting good?

OK, the link-fixed version of index.html is up. Anyone want to volunteer to expand it?

I'm glad to hear the spammers haven't gotten through yet. But, it's only a matter of time.