by Rachael » Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:29 am
To Anwar Garza:
I am not completely unsympathetic to the frustration you obviously encountered upon registering. Obviously much of your post and the way you worded things very much reflects that. I understand it's troublesome, and I am sorry that it is. But right now, I have determined that the benefits of the system in place outweigh the costs, and that is from a very long-term evaluation of the overall effects of the system both as it is now and as it was prior to these changes. If at a future time the circumstances that led me to this decision change (and it's not strictly bots that concern me in this regard, mind you), then I will reevaluate the process and make changes as necessary.
One of the biggest considerations is this: Unfortunately phpBB is not very friendly when it comes to filtering out the garbage, even if it stays stuck in the approval queue. While it's easy enough to filter out posts by one single account, the problem with spam bots is they make a new account for every advertisement (often with random characters i.e. cxjdojjsso or something like that). While it would be easy to bulk delete all said accounts and their posts along with it, it's much harder to discriminately delete the accounts so that the legitimate (and innocent) ones don't get caught in the crossfire. If I were to leave the door wide open, it would be far too easy to accidentally delete innocent and legitimate users, would likely happen far too often, and then you're left with the same situation as we have now, except with more frustration on the part of the moderators who have to deal with that garbage, and probably much to the frustration of the poor innocent users who aren't bots who happened to get their account deleted.
This is the cost of running a popular site. Sometimes, you have to make people jump through hoops if they want to join, if you don't want to overburden your moderator team (who, I might add, are all very busy with things other than, well, you know, moderating, which they do on a purely volunteer basis). And therein lies the crux of how this entire community works: Everything that everyone does is voluntary here. Even the development team. If and when money does change hands after negotiations from this site, it's always for a short term project, and inevitably everything gets done for free again after it happens.
To Anwar Garza:
I am not completely unsympathetic to the frustration you obviously encountered upon registering. Obviously much of your post and the way you worded things very much reflects that. I understand it's troublesome, and I am sorry that it is. But right now, I have determined that the benefits of the system in place outweigh the costs, and that is from a very long-term evaluation of the overall effects of the system both as it is now and as it was prior to these changes. If at a future time the circumstances that led me to this decision change (and it's not strictly bots that concern me in this regard, mind you), then I will reevaluate the process and make changes as necessary.
One of the biggest considerations is this: Unfortunately phpBB is not very friendly when it comes to filtering out the garbage, even if it stays stuck in the approval queue. While it's easy enough to filter out posts by one single account, the problem with spam bots is they make a new account for every advertisement (often with random characters i.e. cxjdojjsso or something like that). While it would be easy to bulk delete all said accounts and their posts along with it, it's much harder to discriminately delete the accounts so that the legitimate (and innocent) ones don't get caught in the crossfire. If I were to leave the door wide open, it would be far too easy to accidentally delete innocent and legitimate users, would likely happen far too often, and then you're left with the same situation as we have now, except with more frustration on the part of the moderators who have to deal with that garbage, and probably much to the frustration of the poor innocent users who aren't bots who happened to get their account deleted.
This is the cost of running a popular site. Sometimes, you have to make people jump through hoops if they want to join, if you don't want to overburden your moderator team (who, I might add, are all very busy with things other than, well, you know, moderating, which they do on a purely volunteer basis). And therein lies the crux of how this entire community works: Everything that everyone does is voluntary here. Even the development team. If and when money does change hands after negotiations from this site, it's always for a short term project, and inevitably everything gets done for free again after it happens.