The Future

[bahua]

We have tried numerous automated ways to combat the spam, but there is simply no bot-proof method. I have activated 14 new users in 2020, and while I agree that's a very low number, that is out of 954 registrations. The vast majority of these are bots. Even including the 14 users I activated, only six have more than zero posts.

I don't like it any more than you do, but the reason this site is not swimming in spam is because of these measures.

[normalthings]

We have tried numerous automated ways to combat the spam, but there is simply no bot-proof method. I have activated 14 new users in 2020, and while I agree that's a very low number, that is out of 954 registrations. The vast majority of these are bots. Even including the 14 users I activated, only six have more than zero posts.

I don't like it any more than you do, but the reason this site is not swimming in spam is because of these measures.

Switching to a host platform such as Tapatalk (what Urban STL uses) would take the burden off your shoulders

[bahua]

The burden of activating users isn't particularly severe.

Also though, I am committed to this forum existing ad-free. I promised years ago that it would be forever. Tapatalk offers no option for any price to keep ads off a forum with this level of traffic. Only individual users can pay a monthly fee to remove ads -- ads which do not benefit the forum in question either. All revenue goes to tapatalk. Also, tapatalk's privacy policy is onerous(sharing user data with business partners, etc), and I cannot in good conscience subject users of a free forum to compromising advertisement and onerous privacy after promising to do the opposite.

[grovester]

I don't believe people are not joining due to onerous application processes.

Most folks are voyeurs and just want to know what's going on without any intention of commenting.

"Long time listener, first time caller". Some eventually sign up when they have something to say.

[kas1]

I don't believe people are not joining due to onerous application processes.

I think you're overestimating how much people care about joining forums they have no existing ties to. Back when a Twitter account was necessary for activation I just didn't bother with it because I didn't have a Twitter account and didn't care to jump through those extra hoops to get set up here -- and I was even someone who had already posted here a few dozen times (on an account which was mysteriously deleted, presumably by mistake in the great war on spam). Email is more convenient, but for a random passerby they have to account not just for the time it takes to compose and send an email, but also the completely unknowable amount of time it will take for their email to be read and acted on. Pretty inconvenient for someone who wants to jump into an existing, ongoing conversation.

[grovester]

So we agree?

[mean]

This forum at one point required a Twitter? That's funny. I never would have gone for that if I had known.

[teclis]

I don't believe people are not joining due to onerous application processes.

Most folks are voyeurs and just want to know what's going on without any intention of commenting.

"Long time listener, first time caller". Some eventually sign up when they have something to say.

I believe I fit this description.

[gfisch95]

I made an account almost for the sole purpose of the forum keeping track of what I had already read for me.

[bahua]

This forum at one point required a Twitter? That's funny. I never would have gone for that if I had known.

Definitely not in the time I've hosted it, which began in 2006, I believe.

[Chris Stritzel]

Just putting this hear because it was talked about, but now the Forum displays a Tapatalk Favicon on my Safari on Mac. Before, there was never a favicon, so I just find it interest that there's a tapatalk one up there now.

Anyone else have this? Not sure if you can see it from the screenshot, but it's there in the top right.

[bahua]

I think that's just safari taking a liberty with a phpbb forum without its own site icon.