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Need advice regarding silent forum joiners...

Started by DreamBliss, July 31, 2006, 06:53:31 AM

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DreamBliss

I can't help but be suspicious of the some of the new signups I'm seeing over at my forums (SMF 1.0.7):
http://nucleus.planetunreal.gamespy.com/smf/index.php

I've had two new signups in 2 days, and the forum has been pretty much dead for a few years now. I have recently updated my site, so maybe some life is breathing back into it, but I'm not sure. So I was wondering what the best way is to deal with folks that sign up, and then never post or do anything. How can I be sure they'r not letting bots in to harvest e-mail addresses or something? Why would folks sitgn up and never do anything in the first place? I do have e-mail confirmation on, and guests can only browse the forum but that's it. Any advice regarding what else I should do, if anything, would be appreciated.

Thanks!
- Deathbliss


DreamBliss

Thank you, but that in't really the issue I'm sure. Although I welcome anyone here to browse around my forums as a guest at let me know what they think. Anyhow I'll look into the tips posted in that thread, maybe even use a few of those ideas, but I'm pretty sure that there are more malicious things going on and I just want to find out how to discover if this is the case, and then if so how to deal with it.
- Deathbliss

Wolfenrook

Don't know if it will help you but on my site we have 2 rules that may help you:-

1) All new members have to post an intro within 10 days of joining, else they get 2 warning pms and then their accounts are deleted.
2) Members have to post at least once in any 6 month period.

I have no time for lurkers, it doesn't hurt to post something at least occasionally, even if it's just to say hi.

Wolfenrook
Thoughts are free, it's their consequences that often have a cost.

Bigguy

Those aren`t bad rules. Do you find you get alot more posters or are you deleting alot of accounts.

Quote from: Wolfenrook on August 02, 2006, 12:52:07 PM
Don't know if it will help you but on my site we have 2 rules that may help you:-

1) All new members have to post an intro within 10 days of joining, else they get 2 warning pms and then their accounts are deleted.
2) Members have to post at least once in any 6 month period.

I have no time for lurkers, it doesn't hurt to post something at least occasionally, even if it's just to say hi.

Wolfenrook

H

QuoteI have no time for lurkers

I see no harm in letting lurkers be lurkers. They don't take up any time ::)
-H
Former Support Team Lead
                              I recommend:
Namecheap (domains)
Fastmail (e-mail)
Linode (VPS)
                             

Wolfenrook

Quote from: BigguyThose aren`t bad rules. Do you find you get alot more posters or are you deleting alot of accounts.

Most of my members post, and over the last year I've deleted about 10 members for failing to post an intro, pretty much all of who turned out to be fake upon investigation as they never even logged in after joining, ignored warnings, and in one case the email address the member had joined with wasn't even genuine.  Plus on one occasion we got a response from a member who had been sent a reminder stating that they had forgotten they were members and thanking us for the reminder. lol


Quote from: huwnetI see no harm in letting lurkers be lurkers. They don't take up any time

On many sites this is true, but on some sites lurkers just can't be tolerated, for example sites where personal matters are discussed etc.  We have a policy that if a person joins then surely 10 days is long enough to decide whether they want to stay a member, and if they do then we expect them to at least introduce themselves to everybody.  The site I run is about community and friendship, not strangers been nosey.

Wolfenrook
Thoughts are free, it's their consequences that often have a cost.

DreamBliss

Thanks for all your feedback! I have decided to adopt an activate your account and post or PM me within 1 month or your account will be deleted policy for new members. I figure that's reasonable, and now I'm faced with one annoying task. I want to go through and test everyone's e-mail address, and have some list display from which I can easily delete member accounts with invalid e-mail addresses. Is there an addon that will do this, as unobtrusively as possible?

Appreciate all your help!
- Deathbliss

Wolfenrook

This script claims to be able to go through a list of email addresses from a database and test them, so might be of use to you.  I'm not aware of an SMF modification to do this though.

Wolfenrook
Thoughts are free, it's their consequences that often have a cost.

ryanbsoftware

Quote from: Wolfenrook on August 02, 2006, 03:45:50 PM
Quote from: huwnetI see no harm in letting lurkers be lurkers. They don't take up any time

On many sites this is true, but on some sites lurkers just can't be tolerated, for example sites where personal matters are discussed etc.  We have a policy that if a person joins then surely 10 days is long enough to decide whether they want to stay a member, and if they do then we expect them to at least introduce themselves to everybody.  The site I run is about community and friendship, not strangers been nosey.

Wolfenrook

Don't bother to delete them, set it up so when they have 0 posts they see the welcome forum and maybe a few others, have the welcome email explain once they make their inital post, more forums will be visible and have a group that can see the rest of the forum that they are put in once they make 1 post, or more if you wish.  Saves you time of havong to delete, though i image a simple php script could query the db and find all members with a registeration date more than 10 days ago and with 0 posts and delete the, still, i like my method...lol

Wolfenrook

That's a good method if you want to give folks a false impression of how many members you have. lol.  I prefer folks to see how many real members we have on our site.

Wolfenrook
Thoughts are free, it's their consequences that often have a cost.

alienine

Ban them for "Inappropriate posts", that'll get them vocal.

PilotJourney

I have the same problem, I get like 5 new members per day and no one posts anything, not even the 2 per day that I know are spammers  ???

I have like 20 new members and not a single post.

What does this mean?
http://www.pilotjourney.com
LEARN TO FLY - BECOME A PILOT

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