This forum is becoming useless

[Charles Davis]

Seriously, if you can't control the spam and vulgar ads, you might as well shut this site down and we'll all move over to Canard Zone.

This forum area is becoming a useless embarassment.

[Waiter]

Please refresh my memory,  What would it take to turn on Captcha?

I know you moderators are working overtime to remove the trash, but I must agree with CD. If this site is going to continue to a major resource for the Canard community, then the trash needs to stop.

I now find that I need to be very careful who is looking over my shoulder when I log onto this site. I can no longer pop up this site to show a new builder something, and I need to make sure I don't visit this site when I have a new person sitting beside me at the computer.

I would be more than willing to host this site if it requires a move. Tell me what I can do to help eliminate this stuff?

Here is a brief summary on how to enable CAPTCHA, This was taken from;

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/274.htm

3.1 captcha image verification

phpbb version 2.0.11 onwards uses the captcha image verification system which requires a new member to enter a set of letters and numbers from a generated image before being able to sign up. Switch it on in the Admin Control Panel under in the Configuration menu (thanks to androidtech for the reminder). If and only if you have a significant membership comprising the visually-disabled, then there are mods available to slightly alter the signup process enough to fool most bots. This will kill automated signups stone dead. You will still have the problem of manual spam signups, but we're getting to that...


Waiter

[Delta Mike]

Delta Mike thirds that.

EZ.org is the nicest canard site in my opinion. Let's get it cleaned up.

Who is (are) the adminsitrator(s) for this forum?

[Bruce Hughes]

I think the federal government will have to pass a law to hold
every ISP responsible for the spam that gets on the internet.

The federal government started the internet, didn't they?

Think about it; I send maybe 20 emails in an average month.
Those spam artists are sending thousands per day (per hour?)
That kind of traffic could be very easily detected by the ISP and
cut off AT THE ISP!

Demand that your politicians do some work for their pay........

Bruce Hughes

[wvshoem]

If you are waiting for the government to take care of the spammers – please, do not hold your breath.

This is the best canard site for serious builders and flyers and it is a shame to have this trash show all the time. It would be a greater shame to have any of the regular contributors stop participating here. I can do a search here and find real answers to questions that are relevant to where I am in the build from people that know what they are talking about and, have little worry of the thread digressing into a bunch of useless fantasizing and personal positions. The afore mentioned forum has largely become a site for dreamers and armchair warriors to trade insults and to discuss airplanes that will never fly, or even get started for that matter. Don’t get me wrong, dreaming has its place, but I intend to fly and value input from individuals that have actually built a canard and are flying. I don’t particularly value threads where Dust and Marc Z. piss all over each other about a modification of some kind that someone else brought up with regard to and airplane that will never be built.

Point is, this is a valuable site. It sounds like there are resources and individuals that can resolve this issue. What will it take to make this happen? I’m willing to contribute financially if necessary (I don’t have any technical experience to offer). I’d hate to see this site go away or be diminished in any way.

William

[LongEZDriver]

I have a friend who manages several websites with bulletin boards that look much like this one.  He has people sign up and approves them for posting.  Prior to his approval, they cannot post a message.  He also controls or removes them if they post something inappropriate.  I am sure such a system would work on this forum.  I am certain that his filter, if you wish to call it that, is common commercially available software and may even come as part of the bulletin board.

I agree this forum is too valuable to let sick scum bags ruin it for all of us.

Harry Thomas
LE 104EZ, Chino, CA

[eric r]

I much prefer searching this site vs the yahoo site, and I hope it can be saved.

[Dave in Eugene]

I like this site the best too... Thanks for the effort it takes to make it viable.

Dave

[Joe Dubner]

T'was said:
> This forum area is becoming a useless embarassment.
and:
> Who is (are) the adminsitrator(s) (sic) for this forum?
and:
> I agree this forum is too valuable to let sick scum bags ruin it for all of us.

Noel Wade and I spend a few minutes every chance we get to delete the offending messages.  (The site owner, A. Sisco, has given us that administrative ability.)  We do no other "moderating" although sometimes I'm tempted ...   :-)

I'm just getting back from the race at Kanab so I haven't been able to keep on top of it like I should.  But if you really care, you'll address your comments to the site owner rather than ruminating about it here.

Go to the site's home page (http://ez.org/) and click on the link for "Contact Us" (on the left side near the bottom).  I'd recommend keeping it civil and constructive lest A. Sisco does what I do when I come across messages that are not: I delete them without reading.

And to the few people who actually view the offending messages posted here: how smart is that?  Why increase the "Views" count and give the spammers any encouragement at all?

--
Joe

[Brent J]

I'm not sure about the useless part.  However, I posted a real question and would appreciate some help from some of the veterans.

See:  Long EZ Classified Ad

Thanks,

Brent J

[admin]

Hey guys... sorry I've been away from computers the last few days.
It sounds like we have had another rash of spam. I suspect all the
moderators might have been gone at the same time.

Just to recap the current situation, we have the site spread among
several servers (3 total) at various budget hosts. The main host that
Jerry had the site setup on does not allow any changes to the bulliten
board software that runs Hanger Flying. So some of the things that
have been suggested such as captha cannot be implemented currently.

The plan is to move the site to our main cluster (16 CPUS/2 terabytes of
disk and 32gb of RAM) that is co-located in a data center giving this site
essentially unlimited storage and bandwidth. And we need the bandwidth
as the CSA picture archive has been constantly pushing us over the
quota .

However, it takes time to move the site to a new server due to the issues
of combining the three servers. Time that I simply do not have right this
minute due to work. I have not even seen my Long-EZ project since
about March. It is not a long-term issue and I fully expect to get the
move done by the end of the year (and get the Long-EZ completed
this winter !!!)

In the mean time I think it would be great if we could get some
additional moderators that could delete the crap that gets posted. Once
we turn on the moderator flag for you it is so easy to click the X on any
offending post and delete the stuff.  

Anyone that has been around a while is welcome. Charles, Waiter, Daudi,
Bruce, Harry, Eric and Dave just email me and I'll get you setup.

Thanks for the help and patience and hopefully we can put an end to this.

[admin]

Brent: I think the server that hosts the classifieds was down, give it a try now and I think it should be OK.

[admin]

Joe, Noel:

How many spam messages are you deleting a day on average?

[Charles Davis]

I'm sorry if my headline for this topic was offensive.  Perhaps I should have stated it a different way.  I was just frustrated because I really appreciate this site and all the porn and pharmacy posting seemed to be destroying it.

I can hardly believe how much better things have gotten.

Thanks for the aggressive actions you have taken.

[admin]

No problem at all Charles I understand your frustration.

A big thanks to all the moderators for taking care of the spam problem.