Bot prevention method

[Litargirio]

So seeing as the bots have attacked the forum again, I would like to propose a small feature to hinder the proliferation of bots. Two things actually.

 

There would be two minor rules that'd apply to new members, and how they can post.

 

Any member with less than 10 posts:

1. Must complete a captcha to create a new thread (or also to reply to a topic).
2. May only create 1 new thread every 60 minutes (or whatever amount that sounds reasonable).

 

I believe this would help in limiting the kind of posting that happens by a significant amount, in that one single bot (or person) wouldn't be able to flood the entire forum with trash posts.

 

Of course, these two rules wouldn't apply to most people, only to those with less than 10 posts, as already stated.

[MoonlightSylv]

1 minute ago, Litargirio said:

Must complete a captcha to create a new thread or reply to a topic.

Good idea

1 minute ago, Litargirio said:

May only create 1 new thread every 60 minutes.

Bad idea

[Litargirio]

Just now, ShadowTechXTS said:

Bad idea

How so?

[MoonlightSylv]

Just now, Litargirio said:

How so?

Imagine this:

New member has a problem, gets solved with one reply.

Two minutes later his/her computer completely crashes and he/she has no idea how to fix it.

 

That would be a nightmare.

[Litargirio]

Just now, ShadowTechXTS said:

Imagine this:

New member has a problem, gets solved with one reply.

Two minutes later his/her computer completely crashes and he/she has no idea how to fix it.

 

That would be a nightmare.

well 60 minutes is just an example, it can be adjusted.

[MoonlightSylv]

Just now, Litargirio said:

well 60 minutes is just an example, it can be adjusted.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Litargirio]

@ShadowTechXTS

Though having to wait something like 30 or 40 minutes is inconvenient, it's not a huge deal either, really. If the person still needs to create a third topic after that, he should probably go back to the other two and reuse those istead.

[GreezyJeezy]

you suck at making two ideas, just make one ok

[handymanshandle]

Well I agree captchas should be a thing for me members with low post counts. I don't remember if a captcha is part of the sign up process but if it's not it seems like it'd be easy to integrate.

 

[13CA350]

It's kinda annoying to see people with no profile picture too, so maybe some way of forcing or highly encouraging it?

[iamdarkyoshi]

Solution: Click the button that looks roughly like this

/!\

[LogicalDrm]

Forum software sees creating topics and replying to them as same thing. So adding time limit of even just 1min would be really annoying for someone trying to do some troubleshooting.

 

Captcha is kinda ok. But since registration already requires one, I have my doubts adding one more would make any difference. Instead of human making accounts and letting bot do posting, we'd have user copy-paste same thing.

[colonel_mortis]

The spam that we get would not be prevented by more captchas, because it is posted by people. 

If we added a rate limit for topics, I suspect they would just post in existing topics, which would make our response time slower, and that isn't a good outcome. 

[Litargirio]

1 hour ago, colonel_mortis said:

The spam that we get would not be prevented by more captchas, because it is posted by people. 

Well, the idea is not as much to stop them as to slow them down a tad, so a single person doesn't get to flood the entire forum with trashposts, and maybe instead just doesn't get to post more than two or three topics before the get banned.

 

Though perhaps it may still be a good idea to introduce a tiny 1 minute delay between creating posts, just for people with less than 6 of them.

 

Also, what @13CA350 said is a very good idea, having to upload a profile picture before posting, and maybe fill a few other profile things; not necessarily super time consuming (1-2 minutes) nor annoying for newcomers, but just enough to make having to create a new profile every time a slight pain in the butt.

 

No, this still wouldn't prevent shitposting completely, and that's not the point either, but it would at the very least discourage it by a significant amount, as it would be unefficient and annoying for them to have to create a new profile every time for their cause.