500 Server error's

[Voyager One]

Whoa! WTH just happened? I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to log on for the last 60 minutes - with absolutely no response from the forums...


My penny regarding spambots...
With all respect towards lurkers (as previously discussed), I see this as choosing a lesser evil. Should 1000+ spambots remain to cause problems because of one or two possible (but not confirmed) lurkers? My thoughts remain as I've previously said:

Side thought, but maybe perhaps it would be a good idea to purge some of these spam accounts? For example, no posts and having registered more than 3 years ago? I seriously doubt any legitimate users will have even cared if we deleted an account they created but never used.

TBH, I'd be even more harsh - up to a month. Basically, if someone has registered only to be a name on the forums... what's the point of that. Anyone can read our posts without having to register.

... and regarding that "PMing but no posting" discussion - with all due respect - there are other ways in communicating than this.


One more idea - IIRC as SAC has implemented on Simuscape forums - all new users register as always and then MUST post one "I'm here" post and one of the moderators then has to approve that user.

[ChillCore]

We all know how much you love modding phpbb orudge, so thank you in advance.

But something like this would do a great deal.
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2122138

Still looking for something that only affects the user's personal webpages link in their profiles though, we see very little spam on the forums itself these days, thank you to all for your efforts, much apreciated.


Instead of deleting spammers ...
Why do we no keep them and turn the table on them?
As in let them register and increase the number of users; that looks good in the statistics, but at the same time prevent them from taking advantage of what they do.

Sounds mean?
I would go as far as change their link to www. tt-forums.net/iamaspammer.html
And have that page say something like:
"Yes, me too I got my spam replaced with a link to this page!"
Maybe add a really annoying and fuggly nyan cat too.

[Purno]

My penny regarding spambots...
With all respect towards lurkers (as previously discussed), I see this as choosing a lesser evil. Should 1000+ spambots remain to cause problems because of one or two possible (but not confirmed) lurkers? My thoughts remain as I've previously said:

Side thought, but maybe perhaps it would be a good idea to purge some of these spam accounts? For example, no posts and having registered more than 3 years ago? I seriously doubt any legitimate users will have even cared if we deleted an account they created but never used.

TBH, I'd be even more harsh - up to a month. Basically, if someone has registered only to be a name on the forums... what's the point of that. Anyone can read our posts without having to register.

... and regarding that "PMing but no posting" discussion - with all due respect - there are other ways in communicating than this.

Lurking, as well as PMing, requires a user to log in. phpBB3 keeps track of a user's last login. Though this isn't useful for deleting new spam accounts, it could be used getting rid of old ones, without deleting accounts of active lurkers and PMers. I bet you could even save old accounts that have PMs sent or received, to prevent those getting lost. Since PMs are stored in the database and linked to a user account, they could be filtered out by a query.

[Purno]

As in let them register and increase the number of users; that looks good in the statistics,

Seriously?

Do you think the same about your personal postcount?

EDIT:

Sounds mean?
I would go as far as change their link to www. tt-forums.net/iamaspammer.html
And have that page say something like:
"Yes, me too I got my spam replaced with a link to this page!"
Maybe add a really annoying and fuggly nyan cat too.

Yeah sure, add a really annoying nyan cat, because the only ones clicking that link would be valid users being trapped by a spammer. Why would a spammer even click their links. They're paid for posting links, not clicking them.

Worst idea so far, IMO.

[ChillCore]

I have only one post here but I ran out of characters a few times ... .

I would delete them to be honest,
It is just an idea to really deter them from registering at all, maybe, while using them in the same way they are using us.
They do come back usually to try and post again or see if their previous post got past the mods. Compare registering date with last visit for most of them ...

[Purno]

I would delete them to be honest,
It is just an idea to really deter them from registering at all, maybe, while using them in the same way they are using us.
They do come back usually to try and post again or see if their previous post got past the mods. Compare registering date with last visit for most of them ...

I think blocking their ways of spamming is enough to annoy them, and with any luck, they realize it's more useful to spam elsewhere.

[SAC]

One more idea - IIRC as SAC has implemented on Simuscape forums - all new users register as always and then MUST post one "I'm here" post and one of the moderators then has to approve that user.

Actually, what prevents spambots from at all entering Simuscape are the spambot countermeasures. And the first post requirement is simply a 2nd step to ensure they won't find their way inside. It's not handled by a moderator but merely a setting in phpBB3, keeping the forums from opening up until that first post is made!

And while this has been discussed previously, I can only say that we haven't had a problem at all with spambots whatsoever. Simuscape works in the same manner as TT-forums these days as well, it's only required to register in order to post and to download files.

[orudge]

But something like this would do a great deal.

That may be of use - however, it's been abandoned since 2011, which may be a pain if it doesn't work nicely on the latest version of phpBB. Plus we already have two other anti-spam mods that do quite well for catching spam (there is a lot that tries to get posted that you don't see). Possibly I can tighten up the profile restrictions, I'll have to see what they can do.

Lurking, as well as PMing, requires a user to log in. phpBB3 keeps track of a user's last login. Though this isn't useful for deleting new spam accounts, it could be used getting rid of old ones, without deleting accounts of active lurkers and PMers. I bet you could even save old accounts that have PMs sent or received, to prevent those getting lost. Since PMs are stored in the database and linked to a user account, they could be filtered out by a query.

Yes, that wouldn't be hard to do, and if I ever did do a bulk delete of zero-post users, it'd be conditional on the user having not logged in for X months/year, no posts, no PMs, etc. However, existing spammers in the member list that aren't doing anything aren't really a problem per se; it's rare these days for spammers to pick up old accounts and start spamming with them. It's just all the new spammers that keep registering that are a problem.

[Purno]

However, existing spammers in the member list that aren't doing anything aren't really a problem per se; it's rare these days for spammers to pick up old accounts and start spamming with them. It's just all the new spammers that keep registering that are a problem.

Which makes me wonder, are the 500 Server Errors and general slowness related to this spammer problem, or are they two seperate problems?

[orudge]

Well, the slowness may be due to an influx of spammers, or just an influx of traffic generally. I haven't yet identified it exactly.

EDIT: You may notice the user count slowly decreasing. That's because phpBB is, slowly, deleting zero post users who haven't logged in before 2012-01-01. I will also delete users that have zero posts who have never since logged in, once that's done, but it's going down at a rate of about 1 (activated) user per second, so it is a bit slow.

[ChillCore]

I missed this edit ...

EDIT:

Sounds mean?
I would go as far as change their link to www. tt-forums.net/iamaspammer.html
And have that page say something like:
"Yes, me too I got my spam replaced with a link to this page!"
Maybe add a really annoying and fuggly nyan cat too.

Yeah sure, add a really annoying nyan cat, because the only ones clicking that link would be valid users being trapped by a spammer. Why would a spammer even click their links. They're paid for posting links, not clicking them.

Worst idea so far, IMO.

I would only do their profile link, so they are the ones seeing it.
How often do you go to someones profile page to see their personal link, me next to never but spammers do to see if they were succesfull in what they wanted to achieve.
I would if I were a spammer; how else am I getting payed? If noone checks I could as well just say hey I posted 500 links the last 30 minutes but yeah sorry they got removed. can I have my pay now?

I would also add their original link to that page ... you do not want to end up there with a link to your company so you would tell the spammers that work for you not to spam here.

[orudge]

At the rate this is going, it may be 15-16 hours before all these accounts are deleted. (There are around 60,000 of them. Just doing a "DELETE FROM phpbb_users xxx" in the database wouldn't really be good, as phpBB has lots of references to users in other tables, so probably best to do it the proper way.)

[Redirect Left]

One thing I do at my boards is just delete any account with zero posts, and also has a URL in their signature.

A real user has no need for a URL in their signature if they're not going to be posting for peeps to see it

[michael blunck]

EDIT: You may notice the user count slowly decreasing. That's because phpBB is, slowly, deleting zero post users who haven't logged in before 2012-01-01 [...]

Yeah, it works!

There are around 60,000 of them

Hehe. I hesitated to write "tenthousands" in my post above ...

Very good move, Owen.

regards
Michael

[Transportman]

At the rate this is going, it may be 15-16 hours before all these accounts are deleted. (There are around 60,000 of them. Just doing a "DELETE FROM phpbb_users xxx" in the database wouldn't really be good, as phpBB has lots of references to users in other tables, so probably best to do it the proper way.)

60.000 of those accounts when you started the cleaning I hope? Otherwise we are going to have a little problem, as the total member-count is less than that.

[orudge]

phpBB 3.x doesn't show unactivated/disabled accounts in the member total. There are (were) around 80,000 users registered on the forum.

[jonty-comp]

I don't know what specifically is causing the slowdown, but there's a decent chance that blocking spam registrations won't make any difference anyway - they're still bombarding the site with traffic. Hopefully if you can clear out ~60,000 junk users and then vacuum all the tables (can you even do that in mySQL? I hope so) it'll speed the database engine up somewhat, though.

[orudge]

Well, it may reduce some of the overhead at least, indeed. I'm not expecting this to be a magic bullet, but if it helps, then that should be good at least.

[jonty-comp]

If you uncomment the log-slow-queries directive in my.cnf and then pipe the results through mysqldumpslow, it might help to work out what causes the most delay - i've found it's normally one specific thing as opposed to a general build-up of many queries.

[Hyronymus]

At the rate this is going, it may be 15-16 hours before all these accounts are deleted. (There are around 60,000 of them. Just doing a "DELETE FROM phpbb_users xxx" in the database wouldn't really be good, as phpBB has lots of references to users in other tables, so probably best to do it the proper way.)

It took you a few years to do it but I'm glad you are doing it now. I do hope the banned IP's linked to the deleted users remain in place though.