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| SPAM |
 Since a couple of weeks now, our site is target of spammers mostly linking movie related sites.
Sorry for the mess, I'm committed to regain unhindered community exchange. This site is here to stay and to remain on topic! Massive unrelated spam seriously changes our SEO profile for the worse, preventing real joint crackers from finding this site. The spam must stop.
I will look for a solution with minimized effect on normal usage. Please PM me if you find that any of the current measures limit you in any way. The following list will be updated regarding this ongoing battle against spam. I'll post my current anti-spam research in the "Read More..." section.
Current measures against spam [Update: 2012-01-06] - Automated spam moderation: We now have regular automated mechanisms in place which retroactively look for typical spam behavior patterns. If such a pattern is found, the user is automatically banned without warning. I'm sorry that I have had to take this rather drastic measure. Normal users should not be affected by this. Since I'm pretty sure we are dealing mostly with Indian human spammers at the moment, please understand I won't publicly disclose the current automated spam pattern analysis, which I will update regularly anyway.
- More regular manual moderation: I deleted all recent spam topics which caught my eye. Our movie-spammers love "Off-Topic" because they can most easily pretend to be real users there. If anyone feels he / she is up to the task to help me moderate this site, please apply via PM. I'd be happy to hear from you!
- Banning of spammers: Any caught spammer will get his registered email and / or IP banned, his topics deleted and his user deleted after one prior warning via PM. If the user has only contributed mindless, content-free "me too" or "niice forum" and spam posts there will be no warning before banning. I will drop such users retroactively, starting today. If you get dropped, you'll know why.
- Improved login security: I replaced the old captcha with an improved simple layer of registration and login security to hinder spam bot registration and / or logins. My questions should not be too tough for human users. If you can think of any other fun site-related question, please share with me. There are multiple questions which will rotate, you can try as often as you like. If you think I missed a popular answer on any question, please notify me, too. After a few days of observation, the new layer does seem to help after all: Spam bots appear to be stopped (for now), human spammers who followed them started to get tired of posting spam and getting dropped shortly thereafter.
- HTML disabled: I disabled html in posts to discourage prominent linkage to external spam sites.
- Post flooding prevention: I doubled the enforced time to wait between posts. No normal user should need to post more than once within 30 seconds.
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| Moved to new host |
Unfortunately, we have had some trouble with our hosting in the last two years. The old hosts service quality has deteriorated dramatically within the service contract. Fortunately, it didn't get really bad until the very end. So instead of extending our stay...
...we moved to a new, currently much more reliable, innovative and faster host. Should this one slip up over time, we won't have to wait long to move again, thanks to the now monthly plan.
All nameservers should be updated within the next 48 hours. Please post should you encounter any problems.
At the same time security has been tightened up.
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| Pending upgrade [Update 6] |
To move forward with this site I plan to swap the meanwhile outdated PHPNuke CMS architecture with the current top of the line CMS framework Drupal.
Of course I will try to make the transition as smoothly as possible. Stay tuned for exciting new possibilities and much better SEO properties!
Please take part in the currently running poll, so I know your stand on this.
UPDATE 6:
It is amazing how long our sites' old architecture stood it's ground with only minor fixes, it has been almost six years! PHP-Nuke has been a great start but now definitely reached end of life, it is e.g. getting hard to fight off modern spam. It is about time we jump ship. Drupal matured even further after I had the first idea to migrate to it, so now should be a really good opportunity to do just that. I'll start work on this real soon, I'll try to relaunch us as soon as spare time permits. I'll be learning Drupal along the way, this should be a fun ride.
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| Registration bots locked out |
In the last couple of weeks a fair number of bots registered at this site with the sole purpose of increasing the page rank of an usually pornographic website. Never mind the futility of this attempt regarding that the memberlist isn't even visible to neither the public nor to spider bots due to privacy reasons.
The easy-access registration loophole has meanwhile been filled and verified. It will take a while until these bots have grown smart enough to bypass the now inevitable counter measures at the regular registration form. Don't worry, only bots will despair here, human users won't even notice any change. :)
As an added positive side effect the "User Info" box is now displaying much more realistic numbers.
There are two pretty reliable indicators for bot users:
- no posts
- website specified
Currently, 76 out of 190 users match this profile. It's in the best interest of this community to purge these very likely bot users from the database before they decide to actually start spamming in the forums.
Of course I might still be in error in a few rare cases. Maybe some fellow jointpopper is just too shy to write anything?
This is why I won't clean up until the 30th of September 2006. Of course any user registering after the 14th September won't have to worry in any case.
If you find yourself in the following list, please send me a private message, post a quick hello or anything. Thanks and sorry for this mess.
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| Jointcrackers.com launched! |
On
Monday 09th January 2006 Jointcrackers.com has finally been launched as the definite site dedicated to Joint cracking! It is hard to believe...
but there really was no definite resource until then!
I filled the forum with initial content to get us started. Of course it takes a
little while for a new community to establish itself. For this we need you and
your experiences. It is easy to register and start posting.
Feel free to reply to existing posts or open new topics as you wish.
I will never ever use any supplied emails for any other purpose than to re-send
lost passwords. Of course, I do not block sites like spamgourmet.com for those
still paranoid either. The email activation is merely a safe guard against
spammers. Dare
to start contributing! Whatever it is, it is highly appreciated. :)
Best regards,
JointCracker
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