Somebody spammed the message boards with one of those send a dollar to five people messages. I've never seen that before on web boards. Was it done by hand or is there a program now that hunts out boards and posts messages automatically? I'd hate to have to make people register to be able to post, but if the boards keep getting spammed, I may have to do something. It's much more of a pain to delete messages on the board than it is to delete email.

In other board news, I know that some threads load slow. I guess I need to archive some stuff or just delete it. Does anyone care if old messages are deleted? I sort of hate to do it, but I'm not sure there's much value in keeping them.

Well, how much do inactive threads affect active ones. That Jessica Mulligan thread got to where it was loading pretty slowly, but it never "died." I mean, it's your board and all, but...I kinda like being able to go back to something later. I'd cast my vote for "archive" if you can find a means to do so easily.

But, again -- it's your board. Do what you've gotta do, man.

I think it's just individual threads that can become troublesome. A thread with 150 messages has to load all the messages every time you access it. A short thread shouldn't have problems.

I can archive by hand. I guess I'll do that. There's a better version of Discus that has auto-archive, but it costs $99. I don't want to pay for that. That's $99 that I could spend on potato chips or used paperbacks, etc.

Sure -- no one would you expect you to fork over that kind of cash, and I doubt that you'd want to ask for donations to "upgrade the boards."

It sounds like a real hassle, though. It's probably not worth the trouble. Maybe some of the more "memorable" messages could be kept, though...

Ultimately, it's up to you. There could be a lot of people here that think just deleting some of the older ones is a better idea. They might be right.

I'm more worried about spam at this point since we've been spammed again. Anyone have any ideas? This is damned irritating.

Heh, well, this guy left his e-mail address...Let's spam him!! Everyone e-mail misterdj now!!

I almost think, judging from the times, he had to do this one message at a time.

Heh. Doh! Don't know why I expected that to be a REAL address!! Nevermind that...

Well, he did leave an address...Mark, I'd write it down.

Better still...Everyone can send this guy NOTHING, other than a dirty note stating what a jerk he's being...

Imanol Belaza apt 1448, 482 W San Ysidro blvd, San Ysidro, CA 92173-2444 USA

Yeah, this sucks. To whomever's spamming, let me quote an email I got today from a game company person:

"Thanks alot, cocksucker."

Wow. I take it somebody didn't like a review you wrote? Man, people just shouldn't send crap like that to reviewers. Don't they realize that you (we) are doing a service for them, too?

Statements like that are best saved for -- well, for people who spam messageboards. Not for reivewers with nothing but good intentions. Bah.

Wow, I've never seen anyone spam a message board either. Damn annoying. Wumpus, that's not you is it? Heh.

As for deleting messages, I say go for it. Load times are really bad in the longer threads. I like to save stuff from these boards, too, but for quicker load times, it would be worth it.

Maybe if you could adopt some sort of schedule, so I would know when things were likely to get cut? I usually use NNTP groups. How do other HTTP boards usually work?

I agree that it's probably not worth investing $100 bones to get the auto archiving discus. But don't you mind spending the time to tidy up the board by hand?

As for logging in, I wouldn't mind doing that, but I don't see how it would block spamers from checking the Post as "Anonymous" box.

I think I can prohibit the anon. stuff if I want, at least with the more expensive version of Discus should we go for that.

I think I'll try archiving messages before I resort to deleting them.

Oh, and if you missed it, the board's been spammed twice already. I removed one round of spamming. An hour or two later another hotmail account spammed us.

That's not actually a hotmail account. No such account exists. Some guy either a.) Set up a very smart program to spam some boards, or b.) Is actually going through the message boards, thread by thread, and pasting in this message. I noticed he missed one of the earlier threads, which leads me to believe that the loser is actually doing it by hand -- I don't think a created spamming program would do that, and I don't think this guy's smart enough to set up such a program.

all he did was cut and paste... ooh he is such a leet hacker. wow. btw, do you think this pyramid scheme of a six dollar scam works? would be cool to just make that much money for such little work... but thats besides the point... i hate spam on my favorite board!

etc

I posted it before but..."This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him."

I'm 110% behind registering.

I'm right behind rob here. I don't think this board attracts alot of vagrant traffic, so i don't think it will be too much of a problem either for you or for visitors.

The good news is, misterdj pretty much met his quota for 200 posts in one night. so hopefully we'll be in the clear soon.

Yeah, while I have a user ID, I rarely use it because it eliminates one field I have to fill in when posting. I'd have no trouble though if the board's registration was set to active and you could just fill out a form to get an ID.

BTW, I know it costs money, but some other boards will split the threads into smaller pages so that you don't end up with 1.5MB text files downloading for one thread. Ultimate Bulletin Board does this for example...or maybe take wumpus up on creating a database driven site for you. Game Basement seems to have a very good backend setup. :)

--Dave

A one time donation of $10 from all the board regulars (to paypal) would solve the $99 problem -- right Mark? :)

If registering keeps this guy out, then lets do it. I've always wanted to have one of those cool handles like Rob (Rob). If registering won't keep him out, and I don't think it will, then I think we should keep things the way they are and hopefully he will go away.

Well, his address in San Ysidro shows up on on MapBlast

Even proposing an endless chain/Ponzi/pyramid scheme is a crime in California. Penal Code section 327. It always makes me chuckle a bit how these Make Money Fast posts go out of their way to claim they are legal. Umm, right.

As much as I would like to see the cops go get him, I doubt the DA would bother prosecuting unless there was a lot of money involved.

Well, I'm going to remove the messages and just wait and see if they show up again. If they do, then...well, I don't know what I'll do. I just want to be sure it's a recurring problem before I force registration.

Sheesh, if the guy posted the stuff by hand, he really is a moron. Maybe the person who called me a cocksucker is just doing it to piss me off. If so, it's working. :)

Ha! misterdj's spam is gone. Take that you fucker! There's nothing you can do that I can't undo through laborious, painstaking effort!

Rather than shooting or taking local legal action on this spammer, you should turn over the info to your local IRS office. They are always interested in people who make thouands or millions of dollars, just to be sure that the government gets their cut. That ring of hell would teach him a lesson.

-DavidCPA

I can see it now:

Coming soon! Tax Avenger - as a member of the IRS' elite anti-pyramid scheme division, collect government revenue in this exciting 3-D action/adventure. (heh)

- Alan

On OMM we have been spammed before, I don't think they check the audience and just look for forums.
We also have run into the same problem of older posts. If someone goes to the rants forum and hits show all - there are 20,000 posts. We are going to make changes to break it up on pages (for now we just go back 1 month.)

Instead of throwing down money, have you ever checked out this forum http://www.ikonboard.com software? I am on a couple of sites that use it and it seems pretty comparable to ubb but its free. It also allows anon posting etc.

Chet

Wow, what a jerk. This was one of my favorite places to come and post before my work decided it was time to block all message boards (durn corporate communists). I hate to see this type of violation against a place and people that in no way deserve it.

I'm sure some of us (me included, definantly) would be willing to drop some spare bucks on ya to help pay for a system that can stop this.

And, well, I have no problem registering for a message board. It inhibits drop-in posting from new folks, but it helps to stop this type of blatant bullshit.

I'm taking a wait-and-see stance right now. I'll probably do some message archiving by hand over the weekend too.

In the meantime, if a thread is too long, just start a new one and name it appropriately.

That really kills the quotability, though. (Yeah, I know. I have to complain about something...)

I'm glad to hear that, at this point, you're considering archiving. It's not uncommon for me to think "Now, I read about this at Qt3 awhile back...I'll have to go back to that thread..."

Of course, I don't expect you to have to do it all manually, either. If you start to do that this weekend, and think "You know what? Screw it! If they want the messages archived so badly, then THEY can pay for it!!" and decide to start asking for cash -- well, I'll pitch in my 5-10 bucks.

Yeah, I'll chip in my two cents on both registering and contributing. I would be willing to do both for the good of the many. Why? Because the good of the many outweighs...

Oh forget it.

We're behind you Mark. We love this place. Just tell us what it takes.

Amanpour

I'll throw in $10 bucks for your registration. QT3 is well worth it. Let us know Mark.

Mark, I really think you and Tom should set up a Paypal for this site.

I would be happy to register for the board as well, especially if it sped things up.

Board registration won't speed it up. It's just a way to keep someone from logging in and spamming. Well, someone's who is registered could still spam, but that person wouldn't have access for too long.

There may be other board software that's quicker to load. I dunno. Discus has to load the entire thread when you access a message in the thread, which is the problem. Some threads are a meg in size or more.

I appreciate all the offers of donations, but that's something Tom and I would have to talk about.

I feel really bad about sending misterdj money now.

As for the long threads, is there any way to lock a thread once it gets to a certain size? That way, those that wanted to continue a discussion could just start a new thread.

-Ron

I think if it gets to be a thing where it would become really useful to have that Discus uprade, I'd contribute, too.

This is a nice site, and gets lots of work. I don't like the notion of abusing our hosts very much.

$30 from me if you buy VBulletin instead... and make me a moderator.

Frankly the current board software kinda bites. Check out VB, you'll love it.

What is it you don't like about this board software? One thing I don't want is lots of little graphics. I hate the boards at Something Awful where everyone has a cute graphic and people upload all kinds of animated gifs and such. I want the messages to be text-only. I don't mind a graphic now and then if someone wants to post one, but I don't want everyone to have a signature graphic, etc.

And we don't need a moderator. What's to moderate? The boards just a need a once-in-awhile janitor.

Ron, the $99 version of Discus can auto-archive at set intervals. You can have a every post past the most recent 15 in a thread get archived, for example, if I understand how it works. This free version can't do that.

The only real advantages to the $99 version is the auto-archiving and self-registration. The latter may not work if the board's getting spammed, though. You don't want spammers to be able to self-register.

I'm open to suggestions of other message board software. I don't want the boards hosted on a different server ala EZBoard, though.

Again, check out http://www.ikonboard.com . Its free. You can disable the graphic crap. Almost everything is customizable. It is very similar to ubb or vbulletin - but its free.

"I hate the boards at [almost any UBB-running site] where everyone has a cute graphic and people upload all kinds of animated gifs and such. I want the messages to be text-only."

Preach, Brother!

Chet - I'm a message board moron. Ikonboard looked nice, but do you know the answer to a question about it? One of the nice things about Discus is only seeing new messages if you want to work it that way. Does Ikonboard support that?

I like how it breaks threads across pages.

the thing i *HATE HATE HATE* about the Qt3 boards is that the threads get to some UN-F'N-GODLY lengths sometimes, and if one person posts to it, and i happen to wanna read their little blurb, i've gotta wait for all this shit i've already read before to load up. while i'm sure a lot of you lucky bastards with broadband couldn't care less, I'M STUCK ON A MODEM FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE AND IT SUCKS. thank you for your time.

want me to tell you how i REALLY feel? :)

i'd be very very very very happy with Discus if it broke up huge threads into individual pages and such, so instead of loading the past 140,000 posts ya'll made to thread, i might just get the last 10 or so.

also, as others have mentioned, there's Ikonboard, or any number of other free boards, such as Snitz Forums ( http://forum.snitz.com/ ) .. not sure what operating system you're running all this under, either.

- mike - lurk complain lurk lurk -

Jim wrote:

---

Quote:

Wow, what a jerk. This was one of my favorite places to come and post before my work decided it was time to block all message boards (durn corporate communists). I hate to see this type of violation against a place and people that in no way deserve it.

---

Question: Can employers tell when you are using safeweb? Otherwise, why don't they just block that site too?

Mark, for ikonboard if you are a registered user and accept the cookie, you can just click new messages and it will show you all the new threads.

Ikonboard uses perl and does not use a database backend, so its not the fastest thing ever, but it does seem to hold up okay.

Chet

John, I am sure they can see you are connected to safeweb but unless they know what it is they won't shut it down. How do they decide what to block anyway?

The other thing you might try is anonymizer. It may help. Or if you really want to get your messageboard fix and have broadband you can setup VNC (do a web search for it) on your home machine and surf from there. They will have no clue as to what you are doing there unless they block VNC ports.

-- Xaroc

"the thing i *HATE HATE HATE* about the Qt3 boards is that the threads get to some UN-F'N-GODLY lengths sometimes"

Then text-only should be the way we stay. And might I suggest, in the friendliest way, that the reason the threads get so long is because people like it here so much!

kazz,

i'm not advocating moving to something graphically intense (god no), nor something that is pure 'text only'. rather, i'm advocating getting a message board package that at least splits huge threads out into multiple 'pages' of posts, rather than lumping it all into one huge page that i've already (mostly) read.

- mike - lurking? -