The new Textual Confirmation on registering

[Gambit37]

Hmm, just checked, the textual question was asked and no answer gets denied...

Do you mean you got a question where the answer is yes/no, with yes being correct, but you typed no? Obviously, that will be denied!

Or do you mean that typing nothing will be denied? That's obvious too!

Have you looked in the admin to see how the questions are setup?

Anyway, there is a problem with this MOD. It is supposed to send an email to the admin with details about failed registration attempts. That isn't working.

It also sends an email to the creator, with details put into a blacklist! While I think this can be a good idea in principle, this can deny legitimate users who made a mistake. I read up some more about the blacklist thing and it seems as if the programmer ender up cancelling that idea, which is good, but in the name of safety I will disable the "emailing to blacklist" feature in the core code otherwise it might be possible for legit users to be blacklisted somewhere...

[beowuuf]

Yes, what I meant was that the textual confirmation was working perfectly (no answers and wrong answers blocked the registration), and yet there was a spam post here this morning.

I can only think the spammer was actually registered before the security was put in place. I hope so! Added a few more questions to it, will add more as the inclination hits!

[George Gilbert]

To cut out the spammers you need to have questions that require them some effort to answer. Something simple like "what is 2+7" won't really help very much as any one can answer that easily. At the same time you don't want it so hard that it puts real users of the forum off. Ideally, you want something that is simultaneously easy for a user and hard for someone who has no knowledge of DM.

Perhaps something like - "Name any DM character" or "Name any DM monster" would be good?

[George Gilbert]

(Sorely tempted to ask "What is the air speed of an unladen swallow" and see what happens...)

[Gambit37]

Actually, I've now changed the spam protection -- I wasn't happy with this blacklisting email thing as I couldn't see exactly what was going on and felt nervous about legit users being banned.

So I've removed TC and put RAC (Registration Auth Code) in it's place. It might not be as robust but I'm happier with this solution.
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 6&t=552845

It involves the user inputting some text that is specified elsewhere on the forum. If you want to see how, logout and try registering, but please don't actually register. You can submit the form with a name, email, and password but just don't put anything in the RAC field, so that you can see how the error works.

Obviously, this doesn't stop humans, but should work for all bots until they are given knowledge of our auth code. Then you simply change it to something else...

[beowuuf]

african or european?

[Gambit37]

african or european?

But the full quote is "What do you mean? An African or European Swallow?" I think that might have been a bit unfair to be banned for not getting it exactly right...

[Paul Stevens]

I tried the registration. At first I
looked for some time in the index of
the 'General News and Chat' rather
than in the index entry for 'General
News and Chat'. Perhaps I did not read
well enough. But perhaps it would
be best to put the required phrase
in both places?

[Gambit37]

I know this method isn't ideal and does put some onus on the person registering which I'd rather not have to do.

Anyway, if you think it should be in both places, where exactly should I put it in the actual forum? As a sticky message at the top?

Maybe it's better to change the wording of the registration message to "on the forum home page"?

[Paul Stevens]

"on the forum home page"

That sounds pretty unambiguous. At least
to me. Or "In the first entry of the Forum's Main
Index page".