What do you think about the new look?

    There could be a system to say if a post is legit or no (not a spam or anything like that), and you'd need like 5 legit posts on the forum to be allowed to create a thread. This way, there wouldn't be people arriving making their threads and be active only on their threads and not being helpful for other threads. That could help the forum live with more people than just veterans, admins and some regulars. You'll tell me that is probably because of the contest, but I think a contest is pointless if it doesn't help develop the community, that being said I'm not saying the contest is bad, just that it doesn't serve the community as it should.

    Haha, yeah you are right that it is because of the contest. We did have a system in place that allows new threads only after a certain number of replies to existing threads (first five, then just one). It was disabled for the contest because of the obvious requirement of people being able to post their stuff.

    With that said, it is possible that with our updated software I can configure this more precisely so that the restriction doesn't apply in the contest forums. The spam is something we've all been battling with, and automated means aren't proving effective because it's actually human beings signing up — so revisiting the earlier system will be a good step I think. I'll look into doing that this week.

    Just to give an update on the signatures, I did enable them last week however the forum almost immediately exploded due to all of the old signatures being broken and screwing up threads. I've been discussing with the vendor how to just reset them all, which basically requires some database stuff but I aim to do this week following a cautious backup. So they'll be back soon... I swear!

    @Thrik I strongly think that it should have been preserved since 5 posts isn't that big of a deal, you provide feedback for other older member, or post in general threads or even in extreme off topic, that would have helped people getting more feedback, because when I looked at the ten first thread at the beginning of the week, in the contest section, there were 7 people who only posted in their threads and only there, which is a bit sad, because if everyone would have done that, well it would be awkward ! It is too late to do something now, but this should be said at least one time.

    On the spam subject, could it be more the consequence if the more intense flow to the website rather than this software update?

    Quote from jackophant

    Rather than resetting the signatures, would removing all the metadata from them work so that we can reorganise them ourselves?

    Possibly, although that's quite a bit more work and could lead to even more broken signatures as it'd effectively be search/replace stuff. It'd take longer as I'd need to simulate it on a test DB a bunch of times. I'd rather invest my time into other enhancements than pursuing this for too long.

    Another approach that I'm considering is creating an announcement that signatures will be going live a week later, and that members should take the opportunity to update their signatures before then so that they show up correctly and adhere to the new limits (few lines or whatever). Then if non-adhering signatures appear we re-save and/or nuke them, which will be a bit of a PITA for staff for a little while but will probably result in less crapped-up threads.

    Quote from laminutederire

    @Thrik I strongly think that it should have been preserved since 5 posts isn't that big of a deal, you provide feedback for other older member, or post in general threads or even in extreme off topic, that would have helped people getting more feedback, because when I looked at the ten first thread at the beginning of the week, in the contest section, there were 7 people who only posted in their threads and only there, which is a bit sad, because if everyone would have done that, well it would be awkward ! It is too late to do something now, but this should be said at least one time.

    On the spam subject, could it be more the consequence if the more intense flow to the website rather than this software update?

    I think I'll bring this restriction back, but in this particular case I do think it was correct to allow free posting in the contest section simply because it's a cross-site contest with reddit and disallowing members there to not easily post threads here wouldn't go down very well. Nonetheless I understand what you're saying and will consider how to re-implement the minimum post requirement in a way that ideally encourages participation in the creative forums.

    And yeah, the spam almost certainly has increased because of traffic. We've clearly ended up on the radar of spammers who don't just use bots to sign up, but actual people. This makes it much harder to fight but the minimum posting requirement will hopefully serve as an effective deterrent.

    Well, it's clear that now, thanks to "operation Mapcore" on CSGO, the forum is on the radar of many people.

    Developers are using it in desperate advertising moves. Unless spam companies hired by desperate developers, are trying to impersonate developers to get through the wall.

    Is it possible to approve new user before they become active? I've seen it in other forums. We could require an url for personal site or social where we could verify the person is a game dev or enthusiast, journalist etc.

    Quote from blackdog

    Well, it's clear that now, thanks to "operation Mapcore" on CSGO, the forum is on the radar of many people.

    Developers are using it in desperate advertising moves. Unless spam companies hired by desperate developers, are trying to impersonate developers to get through the wall.

    Is it possible to approve new user before they become active? I've seen it in other forums. We could require an url for personal site or social where we could verify the person is a game dev or enthusiast, journalist etc.

    that sounds like a total drag for the admins. And how easy would that be to circumvent with false information? what if you have no sort of personal site, or one that you are willing to share? You can't join?

    I'm always conflicted when members report hit and run advertisement. Because, it's not really spam but it's also not something I would like to see here. I contemplated suggesting a specific forum for promotion but I don't want to encourage such behavior. The alternative is treating it like spam and flagging the posters which isn't always fair (look at the VHS Story thread, it turned out great). I can't think of a middle ground in this.

    Yeah, @jackophant is right about it being a drag. It's always a challenge finding a balance between not destroying staff sanity and keeping spam out, because of course it's possible to make everything super-restrictive but when you've got 10–20 people signing up every day (that excludes ones blocked by automated spam detection) that's a serious pain in the ass and queues will inevitably build up.

    I think that the 'must have X posts before posting threads' will work quite nicely in that it'll discourage hit-and-run spam and drive participation in existing threads. Like Sprony I don't like the idea of a promotion forum because frankly, if we don't want it in our regular forums I'd rather avoid having what is effectively a 'spam bucket' forum. Our registration form does actually say that hit-and-run spam isn't OK and that promotional threads are only welcome from established members, so I think this could work out. :)

    Quote from jackophant

    that sounds like a total drag for the admins. And how easy would that be to circumvent with false information? what if you have no sort of personal site, or one that you are willing to share? You can't join?

    I know it's extreme, was just an idea to stir the pot.

    Fir advertising all forums have the same rule, if it's on the rules don't see any problem in deleting the topic and even the user as they clearly wouldn't come back unless someone take the bait

    I was thinking that as I refreshed the new content page, and then this was at the top!

    While I'm here, how can I edit spoilers? The system seems really complex now as I can't just remove the tags, the spoiler system embeds itself in the post with that black box.

    Not entirely relevant for this post, but what the hell is up with the adverts now?

    I realise these are real people posting not bots which makes it harder, but I checked new content this morning and 4-5 posts in a row were lame advertising from a total random.

    I genuinely have no problem someone from here posting about a game they're working on though... Please just tell me if I'm being a grumpy, old man though.

    Screenshot this weeks ago, forgot/couldn't post.

    This happened a couple other times, but it's quite random and non-reproduceable. Sorry can't remember if the animation didn't complete or if the alert moved up with scrolling or when keyboard came up

    As you can see I was on wifi so can't say was because of being on cell network…

    The content cannot be displayed because it is no longer available.

    I've done some things which should hopefully speed things up, including just rebooting the server. I suspect something went wrong and started using more memory than it was meant to. If it isn't better let me know but it seems to be from my current machine.

    There are now some maintenance updates to install, so I'll (briefly) take the forums down to do those some evening soon. It looks like various bugs have been fixed including some caching performance stuff so that might help with whatever's causing this nonsense. :|

    Quote from jackophant

    Not entirely relevant for this post, but what the hell is up with the adverts now?

    I realise these are real people posting not bots which makes it harder, but I checked new content this morning and 4-5 posts in a row were lame advertising from a total random.

    I genuinely have no problem someone from here posting about a game they're working on though... Please just tell me if I'm being a grumpy, old man though.

    Yeah I hate that shit. It almost killed tigsource for a while until they made a special forum that's basically a giant garbage dumping ground for that stuff.

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