Kern River Website?? Down forever?

[Ants]

There is no clear answer at this time, but I can't believe the following will lead to anything beneficial. At the old hosting site, a new member would show up every few days. The new site seems to generate a new member every 5-10 minutes. Of the total members (6,300 give or take) about 2,500 have signed up since the new hosting site.

Wow, that's a lot of folks interested in fly fishing. If the interest works it's way into the local clubs and IFFF, there will be an unprecedented wave of new members.

Of course there may be other outcomes, but I don't encourage gloomy thoughts or outcomes.

Ants

[Gary C.]

There may also be a good reason why the site has seen such a jump in membership. I had not been a member since the days that caused a shift in membership to this site. After this latest rebuild of the Kern site it is now a member only site. I'm sure that many of the new members were past visitors now joining or like myself rejoining.

Warning!

Only registered members are allowed to access this forum.
Please login below or click -here- to register an account with Kern River Fly Fishing Forum.

[acorad]

fwiw, I think what Ants is referring to is the - and I'm not exaggerating - 20-30 new "members" on the Kern forum that post spam each day.

Andy

[RiverRat]

There may also be a good reason why the site has seen such a jump in membership. I had not been a member since the days that caused a shift in membership to this site. After this latest rebuild of the Kern site it is now a member only site. I'm sure that many of the new members were past visitors now joining or like myself rejoining.

Warning!

Only registered members are allowed to access this forum.
Please login below or click -here- to register an account with Kern River Fly Fishing Forum.

It's that way until the spammers are under control. I built the SSFF's website and it took quite awhile for me to block the junk. The only problem I'm currently having is from shoe salesmen from Russia.

shane

[Ants]

The most recent day showed a new member each hour. I do not have crystal ball that sorts spammers from fly fisherman. The only posts from recent members only echoes what was posted by someone else.

The spammers dilute the useful fly fishing content and provide a general satisfaction with bothering to check for new posts. As members, the spammers have access to post and make the forum un-friendly.

I will disappointed to see that happen since it covers local conditions for me and lead to many personal contacts in fly fishing. But, based on the membership frenzy, I don't see the situation favoring the prior conditions.

My comments are based on observations from information readily available to members. Maybe the forum hosts have a 'magic bullet'.

Ants

[Benny]

The Itinerant Angler requires geust to register with first and last name. I don't know of any spammers on Zach Mathew's forum, but I could be wrong, just saying...

[fivefish]

Benny, the Itinerant Angler site doesn't have much spam because of the same reason FFA doesn't have much spam: it has an "anti-spam question" that basically is a question that requires basic logic to understand and answer. A spambot doesn't have the logical capacity to process the question; only a human reading it does. It's something I notified the Kern board admins about and got told I don't know what I'm talking about.

It's the ONLY solution to the problem. Not banning Yahoo and Gmail accounts, or locking the forum down so that only registered members can see. The only thing that did was make it so only registered members see the spam that still happens.

There's a modification for Yabb (the software that the Kern forum is based on) that adds this functionality, but it's for Yabb 2.5 and I'm not sure if it can be adapted for 2.1 (what they are running) without heavy modification of PHP files, something I don't think their programmer (is Joe still doing their web stuff?) can handle.

http://www.boardmod.org/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1316894374/0

The best solution would be to make a backup of the database, take the forum offline for a little bit (hopefully not a week and a half like last time), and upgrade to 2.5 or 2.6. Then install that mod and configure it. 95%+ of spam will magically stop happening at that point, and the few idiot humans (not spambots, spambots are computers running code looking for vulnerable sites to spam) that make an account and post spam are easily managed at that point.

Here's the IA site with their Bill Clinton question:


And here's the FFA site with the same type of question that requires human logic:


Hopefully they can implement this so that people can continue to enjoy their forum without all the spam. I tried to point this out before directly to the source but got told I didn't know what I was talking about. I've worked for numerous internet companies, worked for Microsoft supporting their Enterprise Server and Developer technologies, and for quite a while have been a web developer writing complex web applications for various industries; pretty sure I know what I'm talking about.

[fly addict]

Before the shutdown there was just an occasional spammer. IF it is just a software problem then the solution should not be too hard to fix, and should be corrected. The spammers are posting on active threads daily.
The Kern forum was my home page, but until the spammers are brought under control I’m using this site as my home page.

[acorad]

So, so, annoying. They gotta do something about the spam.

Andy

[DubL HauL]

Benny, the Itinerant Angler site doesn't have much spam because of the same reason FFA doesn't have much spam: it has an "anti-spam question" that basically is a question that requires basic logic to understand and answer. A spambot doesn't have the logical capacity to process the question; only a human reading it does. It's something I notified the Kern board admins about and got told I don't know what I'm talking about.

It's the ONLY solution to the problem. Not banning Yahoo and Gmail accounts, or locking the forum down so that only registered members can see. The only thing that did was make it so only registered members see the spam that still happens.

There's a modification for Yabb (the software that the Kern forum is based on) that adds this functionality, but it's for Yabb 2.5 and I'm not sure if it can be adapted for 2.1 (what they are running) without heavy modification of PHP files, something I don't think their programmer (is Joe still doing their web stuff?) can handle.

http://www.boardmod.org/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1316894374/0

The best solution would be to make a backup of the database, take the forum offline for a little bit (hopefully not a week and a half like last time), and upgrade to 2.5 or 2.6. Then install that mod and configure it. 95%+ of spam will magically stop happening at that point, and the few idiot humans (not spambots, spambots are computers running code looking for vulnerable sites to spam) that make an account and post spam are easily managed at that point.

Here's the IA site with their Bill Clinton question:


And here's the FFA site with the same type of question that requires human logic:


Hopefully they can implement this so that people can continue to enjoy their forum without all the spam. I tried to point this out before directly to the source but got told I didn't know what I was talking about. I've worked for numerous internet companies, worked for Microsoft supporting their Enterprise Server and Developer technologies, and for quite a while have been a web developer writing complex web applications for various industries; pretty sure I know what I'm talking about.

it's a good thing Wildman is on the case Craig and Darrin thinks it's funny