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Stats Improvement

Started by Novice, October 06, 2015, 08:49:59 PM

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Novice

In Forum History, it shows in "New Members" the total of how many have applied for membership (most of which were blocked spammers and hackers) not who was actually approved for membership. Our group is very small and shows that we have 250 new members this year and 853 for 2014. (6) were actually approved so far this year and 9 for 2014. The numbers are decieving to say the least. Is there any way to correct this without a coding change or do we just need to live with it?

Thank you in advance for your response!
Novice

Kindred

Why don't you just stop the spammers before they even register at all?  That way the number will be more correct.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Novice

Quote from: Kindred on October 06, 2015, 09:36:01 PM
Why don't you just stop the spammers before they even register at all?  That way the number will be more correct.

Well, we use the stop spammer mod, httpBL and have the anti spam settings that are associated with the core program set to the hilt. What else can we do?

Illori

what exact anti-spam settings are you using? some details from you will help us answer that question.

Kindred

Basically -- I have not had a single spammer successfully register in over 2 years now... (with the exception of a brief period when the new questions database for spammers came online)
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Steve

As Kindred and possibly others have posted before ... forget the captcha and use questions to stop them. Set up 10 to 20 questions while requiring 3 or 4 to be answered and you should have no further problem.
DO NOT pm me for support!

Novice

We do use the captia and have three questions set up. What I have been doing is updating the htaccess file with ones matched up at Honey Pot. I hate doing this for fear that it will eventually start blocking potentially credible people. I'll add 5 more questions to the anti spam function and give it a week or so to see if it slows things down any.

But, back to the original question...is their any way to correct the applicants totals from the accepted applicants total? Seems like it should maintain a separate count somewhere.

Kindred

no. There is no separate count....   what you are doing is contrary to the design....


3 questions is not good enough -- unless you have a pool of 10-20 to draw those three from... and if your three questions were in use 3-4 months ago -- then they were ikely documented and added to the auto-answer database

CAPTCHA is absolutely useless at this point.

fix the spam registration problem and you will fix your stats problem
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Novice

Ok...But I think that just because someone (or something) can solicit a registration (sign up), it shouldn't be considered a valid registration (considered a member) until approved if the registration system is set up for admin or moderator approval. I understand the welcome mat concept. I think it just contradicts the approval function.

Once again I appreciate your responses! SMF is the best!

Novice

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