Philosophical Vegan Forum

The spam problem is getting very serious. They're filling whole pages on threads faster than anybody can moderate them.

Can you back up the forum and then make dan and I admins temporarily?

I'll poke around in the settings and see if I can find a solution. Dan may be able to figure out something too.

I enabled Q&A. Hopefully it is working properly. If so, it will be very difficult for spam bots to register.

This will unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) also make it slightly difficult for very stupid humans to register. Can't much be helped though.

brimstoneSalad wrote:I enabled Q&A. Hopefully it is working properly. If so, it will be very difficult for spam bots to register.

This will unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) also make it slightly difficult for very stupid humans to register. Can't much be helped though.

wonderful. any chance you were able to figure out the other mod that limits url posts only to after a certain # of posts?
Also any other mods that you would like to add to the forum?

TheVeganAtheist wrote: wonderful. any chance you were able to figure out the other mod that limits url posts only to after a certain # of posts?
Also any other mods that you would like to add to the forum?

I don't think you installed automod correctly. There should be a tab for that in the Admin panel.

https://www.hostknox.com/tutorials/phpbb3/mods/automod

brimstoneSalad wrote:

TheVeganAtheist wrote: wonderful. any chance you were able to figure out the other mod that limits url posts only to after a certain # of posts?
Also any other mods that you would like to add to the forum?

I don't think you installed automod correctly. There should be a tab for that in the Admin panel.

https://www.hostknox.com/tutorials/phpbb3/mods/automod

There is a tab (see attached image)

That tab doesn't show up for me, I don't know why.

I'll see if I can figure it out.

Another spammer showed up. It was at least easier to delete the spammer and posts with admin power

He registered before I got the Q&A set up:

Rolandtuby
Newbie
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Nov 09, 2014 10:25 am

They seem to wait a little while, and sit on the accounts before they pounce.

I'm thinking to delete any recent accounts that look like spammers- is that OK?

brimstoneSalad wrote:That tab doesn't show up for me, I don't know why.

I'll see if I can figure it out.

Another spammer showed up. It was at least easier to delete the spammer and posts with admin power

He registered before I got the Q&A set up:

Rolandtuby
Newbie
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Nov 09, 2014 10:25 am

They seem to wait a little while, and sit on the accounts before they pounce.

I'm thinking to delete any recent accounts that look like spammers- is that OK?

I trust your judgement.

Not to Jinx it (and not that I believe in Jinxing), but the Q&A seems to have worked.

I have to wonder if it's discouraging real human users from registering... some of the Questions might be too difficult. Not sure. it might take ten seconds of Google searching for some people.

I think I provided pretty much every remotely correct answer somebody might give.

Compatibility with that newfangled forum reader app, Tapatalk. All my other forums are on it, and the reason it took me this long to find TheVeganAtheist forum was because I was searching through Tapatalk instead of Google.

I access this forum through my mobile browser most of the time, and Tapatalk has a smoother feel for phones.

noelle wrote:Compatibility with that newfangled forum reader app, Tapatalk. All my other forums are on it, and the reason it took me this long to find TheVeganAtheist forum was because I was searching through Tapatalk instead of Google.

I access this forum through my mobile browser most of the time, and Tapatalk has a smoother feel for phones.

That actually sounds like a pretty good idea. I don't use it, but I've heard a lot of people do now.



Aside from that, I think you should monetize more so that you can direct the money into forum promotion.

Like, I don't think you need to donate profits from the store; but instead you could spend them on advertising for the forum, to bring more people here. Particularly if we get more dissenting views, we may be able to do more with the incoming traffic than the money would do donated to PETA or something.

Outreach is outreach, of course, I'm just thinking in terms of efficacy. If you invest for a few months in forum promotion, we may be able to hit the first page in internet searches (like Google) for common search terms, and then we'd be able to sustain the community organically from there, and you could shift the profits back to a charity (if you want, or keep it and use it to support you to make more content) with a higher gross than before.

Also, adding more advertisements on the site for vegan products and affiliates. We're starting to get some web traffic here, so that's starting to be a viable option. Affiliates give good returns on advertisement that leads to sales (much better than Google adwords, etc.) and is more topically relevant.