New Registration Rules

[Steve-o]

I know you guys had flirted with this for a while, but what prompted the sudden change? Yes I had seen the increased spam as well, but that's why many of us who are registered choose not to approve a post.

As long as there is a cleanup process that removes unapproved posts more than 24 years old, I dont think it would be a problem to leave it as it lay? In the beginning "Freedomlist" prided itself on allowing outsiders to leave comments without having the hassle of registration. Especially in cases where someone reviews an ISP so that others can rely on it in their choices. Now I fear that so many will be discouraged from doing so, because of the hassle of registering... logging onto their email to confirm... logging in for the first time... finding where they wanted to make a comment... then doing so. We never really see the same culprits in the review section either, usually its the one time guest who helps with their feedback for others.

I just hope you guys either ease registration rules somewhat or bring it back relatively soon. This is one of the only credible places to report on Internet providers and in helping with malware, spyware, etc.
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Independent, Refreshing.

[Corrine]

As the announcement indicated, the spam bots have been working overtime. Most sites include the bots/spiders in their online count. Freedomlist does not. That information is hidden. Here's the stats from minutes ago: 327 spiders (not counted). That's not all google bots either.

The cleanup process is manual, unless we were to remove all unanswered (not unapproved) posts. That is not an acceptable option.

With regard to

Quote:

This is one of the only credible places to report on Internet providers and in helping with malware, spyware, etc.

Thank you. Unfortunately, credibility has nothing to do with registration. Rather, in my opinion, registration enhances credibility. That being said, we still would rather have kept the site open to unregistered.

Throw-away email addresses are readily available. There is no reason why someone wishing to remain "anonymous" cannot register. It is all about choice.

Although comments are appreciated, there will not be a debate about this decision. At least for the time being, it is a done deal.
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Freedomlist.com (March 1, 2000 - 2013)



Take a walk through my Security Garden

[plodr]

Steve, it gets very discouraging when I come in and have to clean up one at a time about 12 spam posts with almost the same referrer links just in one thread (a Greek ISP review)! I spend all my time cleaning and not much time reading nor posting...none of us wanted to keep doing that on a daily basis. Note...I'm not the only one doing cleaning. We all come on at different times and are all faced with the same amounts of cleanup. Threads from 2001 have been dredged up and spam posts added so when I finally clean up the old threads, I lock them. I guess someone googles on good key words, finds the thread and then adds the spam to it hoping that it will gets hits because the topic is interesting.

[v_v]

Personallly, I have wondered how long it would take to get this far. I am not an administrator or a moderator; however as a "pending" post approver, I have noticed recently the increasingly inordinate amount of spam, and I often wondered how much time the admins. and mods. were spending just to remove this deadweight. Just looking at all of the pending posts (and approving some) was costing me more time than I wished to spend. So from my point of view I was amazed that the admins. and mods. put up with all of this for so long!

Sad to say though, I also realize that this change will most likely affect the nature of Freedomlist as we have all come to know it. I think Steve is right in this regard. Registration will prove a hindrance to many and that cannot be denied.

I wish I knew an easy answer to the overall situation but I do not. For the moment then I will just give my thanks to the admins. and mods. for holding off on this decision for as long as they could. As to what the future holds for Freedomlist as a result of this decision, we will just have to wait and see.

v_v
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Justice, Equity, and Meaningful, Productive, and Fulfilling Lives to All Earthlings

[digger]

I would have thought the next step short of requiring registration on all forums would be to require solution of a captcha for unregistered posts. It's hard enough to stop automated posts. It's simple enough that it won't hinder someone who wants to do a one-time post. It's annoying enough that frequent guest posters would want to register to avoid it.

[rgm714]

v_v wrote:

Personallly, I have wondered how long it would take to get this far. I am not an administrator or a moderator; however as a "pending" post approver, I have noticed recently the increasingly inordinate amount of spam, and I often wondered how much time the admins. and mods. were spending just to remove this deadweight. Just looking at all of the pending posts (and approving some) was costing me more time than I wished to spend. So from my point of view I was amazed that the admins. and mods. put up with all of this for so long! v_v

It got to the point that I would not even click on a pending post


It is a sad for that this had to happen.

[Steve-o]

Plodr, Corrine, Curt et. al.

I know it never was at this point for me when I was in the thick of the admin area, but we did the same thing and I sympathize with you a lot on this issue. Nothing pleased me more and I am sure you could find a post of mine in the admin section to make it registration only at one time. Course we didn't have the approve button, so the old fashioned manner of find and delete occured throughout much of the day.

As I have matured in this industry though, my thoughts have changed. Sure, we can get a one time dump email address, until we somehow forget our password. Or we can take the time to register and vent our frustration or joy about a provider, or just as easily give up.

I've seen the changes here over the years just like all of you have, and I think your pc protection area and broadband receives more posts than anything else these days. Which does give some justification for requiring registration (people who need help on their pc will take the time to register and some of those who need broadband help take the time), but the old dinosaurs like myself and some of the others who still work on some of the initial topics like free isps and cheapies too like the fact of debate. If the unregistered posts aren't allowed in some format, then we won't be able to tell people freedomlist isn't their ISP, or that one ISP may be better over another. That was the draw to this board and is why other ISP boards never quite made the impact as a "community" forum.

Look at DSLReports/BroadbandReports.com... there is a reason why they flourish... They let every man or woman post their experiences with a number of providers and assists in helping someone make a decision based on community input. I hate to question the decisions made here, but maybe it was a bad idea to integrate isp reviews with the forum. At least if you made that part unregistered only it would still garner some spiders, but it would also give that crucial community feeling.

Spiders are only brought because of the amount of publicity the site gets. If you were to remove all meta tags a while ago and create a robots.txt file you can curb much of this. Of course its not everything, but it does something. Every post freedomlist has ever done is indexable on google and others at least when I last looked anyway. Multiple things can be done to not index the forums, but keep the homepage alive for all to click to if they search for freedomlist.

Again, I love this place, always have, always will and its my love for this place that I post what I feel. I'd rather see 12 more moderators though than this. Just an avid readers opinion for the sake of debate.
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Independent, Refreshing.

[pete]

I haven't seen anything from that bot since the announcement, but still see the occasional "pending" post. Some appear to be "spam".

?????

Steve:
More moderators might help with hand written spam, but bots don't get frustrated or tired and give up. It was getting to the point where over 50% of new posts were from one source.

[Corrine]

Thanks, Pete. I apparently missed the permissions change in one of the forums. Its been taken care of now.
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Freedomlist.com (March 1, 2000 - 2013)



Take a walk through my Security Garden

[pete]

History is being made....

Registered user = "OG1"

[Corrine]

Thank goodness! I was afraid we'd lose him. I see seagull369 has also decided to stick with us.
_________________
Freedomlist.com (March 1, 2000 - 2013)



Take a walk through my Security Garden

[v_v]

Yes, I saw that OG1 had registered back on 6-9-2006. I thought of doing a big WELCOME then, but I decided to let someone else do it, right pete? (Smile)

v_v
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Justice, Equity, and Meaningful, Productive, and Fulfilling Lives to All Earthlings

[flashback]

I feel sorry for those who can't use their own computers because of software or hardware problem and used to count on freedomlist to get answers without being registered specially when they had to use public internet access in libraries or someone's else's computer .

people used to leave their doors opened but now they jailed themselves in. they gave in to thugs but i ask you who lost the most?
Enjoy your security.it will slowly die just like the rest.

[blsJason]

I can actually say this decision didn't have to do with security, only the annoyance factor of the same unregistered spambots posting the same garbage on an hourly (sometimes even more frequent) basis. FYI to anyone who doesn't know: this spam doesn't have anything to do with free/cheap ISPs or PC security - it's mostly a few barely comprehendable words (broken English) and a link (occasionally a referral link, which we don't allow from anyone) to some website. If we tried to deal with this using other methods that are available to us, we'd have scores of angry e-mails from legitimate FL members stating they can't post.
I will also echo was Corrine has said, this was not an easy decision, but this was discussed and approved with all moderators before it took place.
Thank you to everyone for an (unexpected) thoughtful, intellectual discussion of the topic.
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Poetworld subscriber 2002-2012.
Don't buy Clearwire!

[digger]

I suspect that adding the nofollow attribute to all links posted by unregistered users would have resulted in a gradual decline in the amount of automated spam. The only real purpose of spamming unintelligable links is to boost a site's ranking on various search engines.

But still, captchas are more effective than nofollow.

[CaptainTripps]

I'm surprised that registration wasn't required from the beginning and I don't see how the requirement is going to hurt the forum. I found the forum while searching for cheap isp's and it was very helpful. Of course, I didn't register at first but wouldn't have minded at all if the registration rule had been in place at that time. I've registered at other forums just to ask a question or make a comment - just as others will do here at FL. I'd choose less spam and more info anyday! The new rule was needed and is welcomed by me.