450Bushmaster.net

Happy Birthday Hoot!

Beef Stew wrote:I've been more of a lurker than a poster, but if there is anything I can do to help please let me know!

Beef

Welcome aboard beef stew and thanks for the offer.

We'll see what, if anything, Eric feels is necessary to do. He's driving the bus.

Hoot

happy birthday hoot. mine was on the 29th of oct and i noticed that about 50 of the birthdays then were bots
i think most people buy the 450b as an "extra" upper or just an addition to thier ar collection, so most don't handload and factory ammo fits them well.

Ok, so I'm a little late, but I bare gifts!!! Texas Sheep Dog has offered, for your birthday, any pick from his personnel weapons stash..wink..

..t

I am a lot like beef stew. I get on to keep up with the progress of the 450 and maybe glean some ideas that will make my 450 better. I also enjoy the discussions. I would be willing to donate if there was some type of membership/initiation dues to keep things going. Thanks everyone for making this a great place to hang out.

wildcatter wrote:Ok, so I'm a little late, but I bare gifts!!! Texas Sheep Dog has offered, for your birthday, any pick from his personnel weapons stash..wink..

..t

ROTFL!! Hoot would see my collection and after about saying 20 times,
"got that, got that, got that, don't need that, got that...."
He would get bored, take my Rock Chucker and leave.

LOL, it's crazy isn't it.

for awhile I was looking at every post and when it was obvious spam I would ban the user, delete his account, and his posts. (sometimes as many as 30)

you guys seldom see any of this because I have it set up so that first posts by new users have to be approved by me.

Lately it has been such a rush of spammers (up to 500 a day) that I just quickly scan though a page of new posts (25 per page), pick out the real posts and approve them, then select all the rest and disapprove their posts.

This leaves the spambots as users.

So now I'm stuck with how to deal with that.

Just minutes ago I almost did.

the Forum software has a function that allows me to "Prune Users". This basically means that I set the guidelines and them bam, I delete all of those users.

I set it up to prune all users with no posts and I swear I was just about to delete thousands of users, the majority of which were spambots whose posts I keep deleting. I started to worry about the fact that some valid members who are new or just prefer to lurk would get caught up in the action, so I didn't do it.

I am going to do it though.

Here is my dilema, the thing that keeps me dragging my heels on the forum software upgrade that will help with the spam problem.

The server I am on is using an older version of PHP which does not support the better image verification registration process which defeats spambots. So in order to upgrade I need to back up the database and move us to a new one with the latest version of PHP. This worries me, I'm afraid something will get screwed up in the process, so I keep putting it off.

I can't put it off any longer. I'm gonna just do it and hope for the best (Really, it should be fine).

Before I do this I will prune out all of the spambots. some innocent people will get caught, but they won't be banned, they just have to re-register.

After that I will ask for a couple folks to be moderators.

I know I have been saying I'm gonna do this for a long time, but I swear it will happen soon.

Colohunter wrote:Fortunately we don't get many of the actual spam posts. I always click on the new posts on the right side of the front page and I very rarely see spam posts. I can't remember the last one.

I catch them before you see them. I just cleaned out about 250 new posts and 300 new threads all advertising everything from porn to ugg boots, WOW Gold to picture hosting.

Bug...all of us "real" humans out here really appreciate all your hard work for this site, and we support whatever you think is best. If you want moderators, just aks us!

Eric,
THANKS for all that you do !!!!!!

Joe