birthday / user list spam

[Kogut]

Is it easy to restrict birthday list to people with more than n posts? Even if postless person is not a spamer nobody will know him/her and nobody will care about birthday.

[planetmaker]

This is getting out-of-hand again. The birthday list entries go into the several ten entries each day, and 90% of it are spammers which registered once and never logged-in again after that day.

[Hyronymus]

This is getting out-of-hand again. The birthday list entries go into the several ten entries each day, and 90% of it are spammers which registered once and never logged-in again after that day.

The problem with phpBB mechanics is that whenever you ban someone by username they still appear in the birthday list until you ban their IP or email. I never understood why but it results in a lengthy birthday list almost every day.

[planetmaker]

This is getting out-of-hand again. The birthday list entries go into the several ten entries each day, and 90% of it are spammers which registered once and never logged-in again after that day.

The problem with phpBB mechanics is that whenever you ban someone by username they still appear in the birthday list until you ban their IP or email. I never understood why but it results in a lengthy birthday list almost every day.

No, that's not the case. When you ban a person, they're gone from the birthday list.

[kamnet]

Eh, the birthday list is at the bottom of the page, under the fold, where it's easily ignored. If it bothers you that much, get your nose back up to the top of the page and start contributing some content to the forums.

[planetmaker]

Eh, the birthday list is at the bottom of the page, under the fold, where it's easily ignored. If it bothers you that much, get your nose back up to the top of the page and start contributing some content to the forums.

I couldn't care less about the birthday list, if it wasn't a list of spam links via all the signatures, advertising malware, p0rn and other dubious things as-is now (bare the rare exceptions in the lists like Dave and Badger today whom I wish all the best )

[FLHerne]

Eh, the birthday list is at the bottom of the page, under the fold, where it's easily ignored. If it bothers you that much, get your nose back up to the top of the page and start contributing some content to the forums.

But then there's no point in having it.

It's nice to know whose birthday it is, but I'm not going to look through a dozen spammers before even the first real user.

[Chrill]

The problem is that we have to delete every use manually and the birthday list alone takes a fair few minutes. Whenever I have the time, I happily clean it up. However, most of the time I prefer to deal with present reports and ignore the birthday list since those spam accounts are dormant.

[orudge]

No, that's not the case. When you ban a person, they're gone from the birthday list.

The one-click ban function has a feature that can delete the profile information. (Although I'm not sure if moderators can see that, or if it's just me?)

Most of the spammers I've seen appearing in the birthday list appear to be those that registered last May or so, before we put in more measures to limit them. I may have to try to do another zero-post clearout, but generally I would prefer to leave a threshold of at least 1 year before accounts are even considered for deletion, so it wouldn't catch those spammers...

[FLHerne]

I may have to try to do another zero-post clearout, but generally I would prefer to leave a threshold of at least 1 year before accounts are even considered for deletion, so it wouldn't catch those spammers...

Is a 'zero-post but link in profile' clearout possible? The number of real people who fill in sites/interests etc in their profile and then don't come back is probably about 0.

[planetmaker]

No, that's not the case. When you ban a person, they're gone from the birthday list.

The one-click ban function has a feature that can delete the profile information. (Although I'm not sure if moderators can see that, or if it's just me?)

I don't see that option. But I see that each person I one-click ban is subsequently missing from the birthday list.

[Hyronymus]

No, that's not the case. When you ban a person, they're gone from the birthday list.

The one-click ban function has a feature that can delete the profile information. (Although I'm not sure if moderators can see that, or if it's just me?)

I don't see that option. But I see that each person I one-click ban is subsequently missing from the birthday list.

That is nice, saves a lot of effort. How good does that mod preventing commerical spammers to register work?

[orudge]

It's not perfect, but looking at the last few pages of the memberlist, I see a lot fewer accounts with spammy web sites listed.

[WWTBAM]

When I OCB a user, I get warned that all their profile fields will be deleted (without me setting any options).

[WWTBAM]

I am also attempting to build a bot that will help manage the Birthday list.

[Voyager One]

I know I'm kind of late with my penny but I fully agree with Kogut's suggestion, as harsh as it may sound to someone. I'd set the "n" number to 10 and even that is very low (50 would be even better). Think about it, an engaged user will reach these numbers in no time and others... sorry for being blunt... who cares.

Is it easy to restrict birthday list to people with more than n posts? Even if postless person is not a spamer nobody will know him/her and nobody will care about birthday.

[WWTBAM]

In a week or two, hopefully I will have time to work on my attempt at a python auto admin/moderating bot for these forums to deal with some of the spammers. My plan is for it to give me a list of users it thinks (based on a formula I plan to work out) are spammers so I can verify them as spammers for the first couple of months then hopefully allow it to auto-ban users matching that criteria.

[orudge]

I know I'm kind of late with my penny but I fully agree with Kogut's suggestion, as harsh as it may sound to someone. I'd set the "n" number to 10 and even that is very low (50 would be even better). Think about it, an engaged user will reach these numbers in no time and others... sorry for being blunt... who cares.

That's fine in theory; in practice though somebody needs to modify phpBB to support that. It's something I may try to look into it shortly.

phpBB 3.1 beta 1 has just been released though, so I should probably test doing an upgrade to phpBB 3.1 at some point and try to get things ready for this major new release.

[Purno]

TBH IMO we don't need that birthday list, and I'd say just disable it completely. We got a birthday celebration topic for those who want to share some cake.

[orudge]

But how would you know whose birthday it is without the birthday list?