guest postings

[aoC_PRoZaK]

the last few days a guest user was heavily insulting the voided warranty crew in our board. since this could also happen to any other board or the whole forum (guest users can only be banned by their e-mail addy, which is not really some serious problem for them, getting a new "guest account" takes 'bout 30 seconds) I´d like to see something done to prevent "random guests" from spamming the forum and make me forget my good manners.

should guest postings be forbidden on netsmog?

yes
no SPAM

[GUEST]

[jinx]

I don't think guests should be banned from any forum, that would defeat the forums purpose. Besides guest's on this forum provide a SPAM'goodly' number of responces with accurate help to those that come here strictly for that purpose, after all, this place is advertized and promoted as a " Computer Help Forum".
Banning guests in my opinion would surely hasten it's early demise, SPAMby displaying an image of hostility to any would be - potential- members.
Something to think about.

[aoC_PRoZaK]

hmmmm, ya right, i`m a redneck. but we should think of ways to prevent the forum from abuse ???

[jinx]

I agree on the abuse, but isn't that what the mods and admins are supposed to do ? Haven't THEY been 'empowered' to that very thing ? SPAMIf some one ( guest or not ) starts coming on too strong, the mods/admins should be alerted and they should handle the situation by what ever means, a warning or whatever to the abuser, then if that doesn't do it, banning would/should be their decision, IMHO

[wizbones]

That is what Administrator's and Moderators are for, if there is a spam or misguided post, they remove it as such and all is well with the world again.

I totally agree with Jinx that if you ban guest posting the board will die a horrible death because it will fail to be a useful tool.

There will always be someone who does not agree with someone elses opinion etc etc etc yada yada. We deal with it and move on. Much like the language issue we dealt with oh not so long ago here.

Hasn't really been a problem since has it? Clear out the spam and move on. If you notice it and a moderator hasn't just let them know.

Problem solved.

[vee_ess]

I also SPAMagree with jinx: most of the more regular members started out as guests. but i dont think our moderators should be our only anti-random device.It is impossible to prevent someone from doing a mass attack like that again on a scale hundreds of times over. they can even create programs to do that creating random names (no pun intended) like 11hjkg52vgkl@aofhp32.com and overload the server.

We need to show that wrong doings can have consequences. Tracking guest IP Addresses can do that. We could then find out the ISP and then request info on what user had been using the IP address at that time. Then if we alter the guest policy, we could have it state that anybody who uses it agrees to stay appropriate, etc., and that if they are offensive, they agree that they cannot come back on or they get fined (score for NetSmog) or something. that would prevent entire ISP accounts from coming back not just fake emails.

[Keefe]

Right now, we do not have that many people doing bad things on the boards. SPAMIf it comes to that, we do have many ways to prevent that. SPAMFirst off, we can ban guest posting. SPAMI do not want to do that because some people just like to stop in and make a post. SPAMIf things continue, that might have to be the case. SPAMI can also ban IP addresses and whole subnets if necessary. SPAMAnother thing that i can do is ban email addresses and entire domains. SPAMAgain, these are all things that I really do not want to have to do. SPAMI feel that our dedicated team of moderators can control anything that someone has to shoot on us.

Keefe

[PowerWCRulez]

What you think about guest should be READ only and no posting allowed or just forbidding them?

[vee_ess]

I hope not just for the sake of NETSMOG, but especially for the (you) moderators, that this should never happen again. But why must people be evil.

[Aoshi]

there really isnt that many guest postings, i think that there is too little guest postings, cuz it tells me that guests arent comming here to find out problems to there questions. SPAMf they dont look at netsmog for help we arent getting out to enough people.