Elections

[Falconer]

Wonder if his/her IP address could be blocked...

[alondor]

Wonder if his/her IP address could be blocked...

His/her? that's being awfully hopeful. I'm willing to bet on "it" being the correct pronoun here

[Falconer]

Well that's uncommonly rude. Synthetics have feelings too.

[alondor]

Well that's uncommonly rude. Synthetics have feelings too.

Exactly why correct pronouns must be observed

[Falconer]

E.D.I. preferred being designated as female. ^-^ As did Cortana.

[Falconer]

Tempest. For the love of God. Please make someone here a moderator.

[alondor]

PLEASE! TEMPEST! The dragon discussion page got flooded by ads!

[BeneathTheStarlight36]

Tempest, we've gotten over 35 PAGES of spam, just today.

[Tempest]

Last month, a spammer entered at least one of the riddle answers into his bot and was able to go on a posting spree.

I can safely assume that the >10 guests in the "Who is online" are the bots trying to access their now defunct accounts. The odd thing is these bots are pretty dump because I didn't even change the format of the riddles that much.

But more to the point, it's was not the usual post-a-few-ads-and-leave kind of spammer, which is something that I may not notice right away since such actions do not really attract much attention to begin with

But what occurred last month would have overwhelmed a moderator. No matter how many post you would have deleted, the bot would have returned, created new accounts, posted even more and all this without ever getting tired. I think there was more than a thousand posts made over a few days. As such, an admin was required to deal with the problem since they can deleted hundreds and thousands posts in a single click (while not even having to figure out where those posts are).

[Falconer]

What about blocking/removing an account? I only noticed a handful of usernames go by.

I don't know if moderators would be able to do that, but if they were, that'd solve the problem too.

[Tempest]

There was about a hundred account that were "dormant" (fully registered but with zero post (Exx is the latest official "newest member")). Right now there is 13 guests in the "Who is online" section and I have been looking at the stats for a little while and these aren't real people... bots trying to find an account that is still active. Since they never give up, they will remain around until the infected computers they are using get cleaned up.

And usually, when I block/remove an account, I can only do it from the board administrator panel. So I moderators can affect forums and posts while an admin deals with accounts and the board inner configuration.

So that why I still haven't done anything about this thread. I feel it's not the right answer to the right problem. Moreover, I don't want a moderator to even attempt to quell such kind of attack. A mod may win in the end (read, hold the fort until an admin starts deleting accounts) but the sheer frustration of having done so with clearly the wrong tools would make this a pyrrhic victory.

[Falconer]

I get what you're saying, but I think you may be underestimating how much I would some of us would enjoy it.

On a more serious note though, I understand how this latest attack wouldn't have been combatable(combat-able? whatever) by a moderator, only an admin. That said, is there (and I honestly have no clue, I'm spitballing) a permission level higher than moderator (with access to this nebulous admin panel) but without the almighty powers of Tempest Senpai?

[Tempest]

The thing is I wouldn't have any problem with a mod equipped with accounts management powers but limited to recently created accounts (i.e. some sort of "new users" admin) which would be the perfect answer to spambots but that's not possible considering how phpBB is designed. I can create some sort of low-admin/super-mod hybrid but only with full accounts control. Meaning that if deleting massive amount of spam in a single click would be possible, such admin would also be able to delete any/all legitimate users with equal ease. So it's like having an occasional pests problem and having to choose between not changing anything or handing out shotguns... with nothing in between.

Note that this is not really a matter of trust or anything. I make regular backups and I can restore the board if something really bad happen (it usually takes a while but I have scripts to deal with that so I don't really have to remain in front of my computer to do it) but adding admins is usually frowned upon by the Codex of Online Forums.

Basically, this set of unwritten rules states that the number of mod and admin should be kept at a minimum to complete the required tasks with ease and their "privileges" should also be sufficient to accomplish only the said tasks (but no more). Having an admin account means you are also a target for spambots, hack, undiscovered forum vulnerabilities, and so on. Again, I keep an eye on such things and if I feel that my account or the board is compromised, I can log into the server and lock the database while I investigate. I can also access and fix a database directly without even having a functional board. On the other hand, you wouldn't be able to do that.

[Falconer]

Well that seems like a massive oversight, thanks phpBB designers...

Thanks for explaining that! I didn't know it was an all or nothing deal.

[Dragon444]

Yeah... I need to get into my forum's admin panel and do some digging (I use phpBB as well). If I figure something out Tempest will be the first to know, followed by everyone else.

I believe I may know a way to protect us without handing out any more metaphorical "shotguns". Will be testing soon.

[Falconer]

But metaphorical shotguns are the best kind...

[Tempest]

I have been looking at the phpBB website recently and they are working on releasing v3.2.0 (we are on the 3.0.x branch and we skipped the 3.1.x entirely due to styles incompatibilities). Apparently and once again, the only style supported with 3.2.x will be prosilver.

It's not entirely unexpected (but it's a bit annoying to be honest) but since we can't stay on 3.0.x forever, it may be the right time for me to put the effort to create/update the styles used here to 3.2.x since they will remain usable for some years. And while I haven't checked the new functionalities added (it's still a RC), it may also have some features we need here.

[Falconer]

Fingers AND toes crossed.

[Tempest]

PhpBB v3.2.0 will be made available on Jan 7th, so I will update the board around two weeks after that date (to make sure there aren't unforeseen issues).

[Falconer]

4+ days late....


WHEEEEEE update time!

[Kojack]

I wonder, was the update successful?

[Falconer]

Well, everything still works, so it couldn't have gone THAT badly.

[Tempest]

I'm terribly late (we aren't on v3.2 yet)...

I just think that the code they are using is needlessly specific. By that I mean that everything is hard coded; every image must be a certain size, must be placed in a specific place and if you want to do something different then it won't look pretty. So I can't go the "lazy way".

For example, to display a different logo in the upper right corner, I have to change the width and height in "common.css" otherwise everything that exceed this size will not be displayed. But... forum images will do the opposite, they will be displayed outside their "containers" if the size is not right.

You can see what I mean here:
http://www.dragnix.net/TEST/phpBB3/

I could change the code, line by line, but any update could potentially revert everything back to what they were before. So I decided to wait a little to see if there was a theme that I could modify, something that wouldn't require as much work as using Subsilver as a template.

[Falconer]

Wow, that looks terrible. Why would they make it HARDER to customize?

[BeneathTheStarlight36]

so.............................................




i reported the posts, what, four days ago and nothing's been done.


we really can't just have a moderator to delete these posts?


edit: ten days, and nothing's been done.
edit: thirteen days, and nothing's been done.
edit: fourteen days, and nothing's been done.
edit: eighteen days, and nothing's been done.