[VOTE] Open up registration again?

[Darth Wong]

Many people have noted that with the lingering but inevitable death of the SWvST debate, much of the inter-forum hostility that once prompted invasions of our board is now gone. That does not eliminate the possibility of the occasional troll invasion of course, whether it be from ex-users who can't move on or trolls who have nothing better to do. However, it has been suggested that the benefits would outweigh the costs. Certainly, it would make life easier for the admins, who would no longer have to process registrations.

The downside is that we'll inevitably get certain people posting nasty material in an attempt to troll the board. Unfortunately, I do not have any mod installed to keep new users from posting images, and I'm not sure where I would get one. Therefore, the possibility of image trolling exists. However, the "Report" button should hopefully suffice to keep that under control if it happens. If someone posts unacceptable material like links to accident victims or explicit porn, report him and we'll take care of it.

Anyway, let's see what people decide.

[Connor MacLeod]

Yes. We need fresh blood, and more importantly we need (legitimate) targets to vent aggression on by their stupidity (IE discussion and debate not spammy BS).

Besides if for some reason it backfires we can just close it, restrict it or whatever.,

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Indeed, let's re-open the registrations. If we get a troll invasion, or a massed invasion of spambots and representatives of African royalty, we can always lock it down again.

[Coyote]

Yes, the one real invasion we had actually got handled very well, in retrospect, even if it caused a bit of a tizz at the time. We can open up the floodgates a bit but with vigilance, and be ready to close things again.

[Stuart]

I would strongly advise against opening up the board to indiscriminate registration. The reason is that spamming has now reached ludicrous proportions and the captcha/filtering systems used to keep spammers out are becoming steadily less effective. On HPCA we are getting something like 40 - 60 spam attacks per day (90 percent plus coming from Russia and the Ukraine). Now, admittedly only one or two of those get past the security system but those that did were causing quite serious problems. As a result, we're instituting a double-layered filtering program.

There is also a trend now that spam attackers are actually having the nerve to email the administration, complaining that they weren't able to register. With a high-profile board like SDN, I am afraid it's quite likely that an unrestricted registration policy will result in you being swamped with spam.

[fgalkin]

EDIT: I think this is the post in question (thanks, RogueIce)

Thanks to Xalev for those numbers.

Now, back to the debate: There's something interesting in those numbers. Mike implemented restricted registration around May of '03. '03/'04 sees posts drop by about 30,000 (that's misleadingly low, by the way: the board only opened in July of 2002, so between July and December of '02 we generated more posts than we did in the entire year 2003...more than any other year, in fact). There's a ~9000 post uptick the next year. Then the bottom falls out: down 120,000 in '05/'06, another 100,000 in '06/'07, 45,000 in '07/'08. Then another uptick in 2008. What else happened in '08? Mike upgraded the board and restored open registration. Then in January '09, we locked down registration again. Wanna take bets on where the number goes this year?

More fun with numbers. Ray, you might want to pay attention to this one:

As far as I can tell, Mike upgraded the board on 1 October 2008. There are no new registrations at all until the 10th; I'm not sure, but I faintly recall registrations being closed shortly after the upgrade while Mike worked the bugs out. Registrations are closed due to the invasion on 08 January; they reopen, restricted, on the 10th.

Between 10 October and 8 January, how many contributing members registered (going by the same criterion I used last time; that is, more than 1/2 of one post per day)? Fourteen; three less than have registered between 10 January and today. I previously counted Serafina with the '09 members, but she squeaked in the day before registrations closed, which leaves only 17 contributing members who have joined since registration was restricted again. And unlike my '09 count, I didn't spot any members who posted a lot and then went dark, nor are there any banned members, nor are there newbies on that list (obviously). Now, unless somebody wants to claim that conditions on the board, or conditions in sci-fi fandom in general have significantly changed for the worse in the last 10 months, there's very few factors which can account for the discrepancy, and restricted registrations has to be near the top of the list.

In light of this, I think we should definitely open registrations, provided we can avoid getting spammed

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Darth Wong]

What kind of security do you use?

[Mr Bean]

I vote yes with the catch that I wish a trial period of some sort before having a second vote to close it. IE if registration is throw open for a week. If nothing bad happens that week, registration is open. However if we get X number of spammers, we stay with closed while looking for a better smart ID filter for registration.

[Connor MacLeod]

I think Spacebattles has open registrayion (at least more open than ours) and they dont seem to be excessively burdened with spammers, and they are a far bigger/longer running obard than we are.

[Coyote]

Could we have "seasonal" open registration, or would that be a pain in the ass? Like June-July-August or something?

Would such a thing even make sense?

[phongn]

We could try using reCAPTCHA - pretty much the gold-standard of CAPTCHA systems right now. I am not aware of any automated attack against it but spammers often manually register an account and then begin the flood afterwards.

Spacebattles' system requires that new users post to a "new users" forum first as a sort of CAPTCHA test. Again, this wouldn't stop a manual spammer from registering, posting to the new-user forum and then firing up the machine spamming but it should greatly reduce any incoming attacks.

EDIT1: StackOverflow has a number of threads on CAPTCHA techniques - some of them using some JavaScript trickery to try and make things transparent to the user.

[Master of Ossus]

Voted.

[Sea Skimmer]

Open it up, we had mods and if things get out of hand it can just be locked down again. The vs. debate is dead as it could be given the near utter absence of new evidence let alone the general decline in interest.

[Kuja]

Open it up, we had mods and if things get out of hand it can just be locked down again.

Pretty much this.

[Steve]

Voted.

[Alyeska]

Voted. I say we open it up. Worse comes to worse, we can shut it back down. Lets try a trial period and see what happens. Different techniques can be applied to see how effective it is.

[Edi]

As far as I'm concerned, we could open it up. Given that registration from .ru domains is utterly impossible anyway, those spammers are not a problem. A few more domains added to the blocklist would eliminate spamming from those sources. No loss either, since there has never been anything other than spam registrations coming from there (e.g. yahoo.in).

[Simplicius]

If people feel that any future troublemakers can be managed, then we might as well give it a go.

[Ghost Rider]

I am a bit wary since the last time, but there are a few methods to tie down the most rampant, and if spammers get out of control, then back to the way things are.

[Bounty]

Abstain. I have no opinion on the rearrangement of Titanic's deckchairs.

[Thanas]

I am in favour of this.

[Lagmonster]

This may be impossible given my limited knowledge of these things, but would it be possible to open up registrations generally, but prohibit registrations from specific addresses? We could, say, disallow spammers and anonymous twits using free throwaway email accounts but let everyone else through unmolested save the skill-testing question.

[Dalton]

Yes, despite my misgivings.

[The Yosemite Bear]

voted

besides the automated spammers are already here lurking....

[Eleas]

There's been a slow shift in the board's purpose. It should be encouraged through new blood. Open it.