Membership Criteria

[Peter Clark]

On the list of members there are 18 pages of new applicants who are "validating - thats 360 "members" many of whose nicknames suggest that their interests are not primarilty the organ and its music. My concern is that such a large proportion of the membership being at best lurkers, will tis slow things up or even cause a snarl up for the rest of us who just want to talk about our favourite topic? Rachel or John, any ideas?

 

Thanks

 

Peter

[Pierre Lauwers]

Euh, "Validating" members were meant, not registered members.

 

Pierre

[Guest Geoff McMahon]

On the list of members there are 18 pages of new applicants who are "validating - thats 360 "members" many of whose nicknames suggest that their interests are not primarilty the organ and its music. My concern is that such a large proportion of the membership being at best lurkers, will tis slow things up or even cause a snarl up for the rest of us who just want to talk about our favourite topic? Rachel or John, any ideas?

 

I think that I can put your mind at rest. From time to time, the spam registrations are deleted by the Moderators, a hundred or two at a go. Another screen in the Admin Control area displays information that suggests that the spammers only visit the board to try to register; they don't return and lurk.

 

I understand that the spammer is usually doing this on a contract basis for, say, an on-line casino, and they get paid per thousand registrations/attempts at registration or postings on unguarded guestbooks. The "entry level costs" for a spammer are small - in Russia or the Far East, it might just be the price of an hour on a computer at an Internet cafe. An amazingly large proportion of the spammers in our validation queue have e-mail addresses in the .ru range. For the client, such as the Internet casino, the returns may be quite good (otherwise they would not go on doing this): they probably have only to catch a handful of new gamblers to cover the cost of paying the spammers.

 

Moderator, Mander Organs

[pcnd5584]

I think that I can put your mind at rest. From time to time, the spam registrations are deleted by the Moderators, a hundred or two at a go. Another screen in the Admin Control area displays information that suggests that the spammers only visit the board to try to register; they don't return and lurk.

 

I understand that the spammer is usually doing this on a contract basis for, say, an on-line casino, and they get paid per thousand registrations/attempts at registration or postings on unguarded guestbooks. The "entry level costs" for a spammer are small - in Russia or the Far East, it might just be the price of an hour on a computer at an Internet cafe. An amazingly large proportion of the spammers in our validation queue have e-mail addresses in the .ru range. For the client, such as the Internet casino, the returns may be quite good (otherwise they would not go on doing this): they probably have only to catch a handful of new gamblers to cover the cost of paying the spammers.

 

Moderator, Mander Organs

 

Good grief - I had no idea that this type of thing took place.

 

If this is a suitable place to do so, I would like to express my thanks to Mr. Mander and his colleagues for their continued support of this excellent board.

[john carter]

If this is a suitable place to do so, I would like to express my thanks to Mr. Mander and his colleagues for their continued support of this excellent board.

Hear, hear! A very smooth transition to the new server as well. Many thanks.

JC

[Pierre Lauwers]

We have exactly the same problems with our french forum.

We are 9 -nine!- administrators, sharing the Spam burden,

filtering the registrations etc.

Like in organ-building -quality has a price!-.

But the results are there...

 

Pierre

[Peter Clark]

Good grief - I had no idea that this type of thing took place.

 

If this is a suitable place to do so, I would like to express my thanks to Mr. Mander and his colleagues for their continued support of this excellent board.

 

I'd certaiinly add my name to yours, PCND, in thanking John Pike Mander and the rest for this excellent forum, and also say that I am glasd to see that the "validating members" pose no threat to the security of this board.

 

Cheers

 

Peter