Deleted 2,037 Users

[Wicho]

Every new person wanting to join should have to donate some flavor of an XTS.

With that said (and I'm joking about it),

For those of you that have not ever donated anything back to the board, maybe send a couple of dollars over to help out once a year or so. Imagine if every member of the board (what 8000 or so) gave just one dollar a year to help support the board? Just some more food for thought.

This has been a free resource for all of us for a long time, maybe it's time to give back a little more. How much would $1.00 or even $2.00 per year hurt any of us to give to the board for all it does for us. Maybe this could be a requirment for access? What do others think about this? Imagine what this could do in helping pay for upgrades that may be needed in the future?

I completely agree with the above, and it's time I put my money where my mouth is and support the board in more than just spirit. Having a small initiation fee or minor dues could go far in reducing the riff-raff who signs up and never does anything.

Now, I know there are those who will oppose initiation fees or dues, but remember: you can still look at all the information without joining, you just can't post or view B/S/T or feedback.

I am against not allowing free email addresses to join, however. I use a yahoo address and it's kept me from being able to join Radio Info Board.

[alex]

Before you guys all go nuts and wave cash around - Hold off.

I need to come up with something for you guys to put it towards - there's a crapton of cash in the server fund as it stands. Let me see where we stand, what we need, before you start waving Benjamin's

-Alex

[Wicho]

Oops! Just sent PayPal. Oh well.

Maybe put it towards a case o' brew?

[alex]

No problem, I'll make sure your tag gets updated regardless.

However, everyone else - Hold Off.

I want to make sure you all know where any funds are going - as the server money we are swimming in.

I'm not saying every bit doesn't help, but I want you to know what you can expect to see done with it before you all go nuts. I'm sure you can appreciate it.

-Alex

[contrak10]

Having a mandatory donation could prove to draw people away, people are cheap, if I can find the same information for free I wont want to pay a dime where i don't have to.

won't post my SSN, but I can PM it if necessary.
I won't post my ph#, but I can PM if you need it.

Umm, yea i wont giving either of those. Plus you can run into serious trouble if you starting keeping and holding SS numbers. You cant just start collecting peoples information without holding a serious security overhaul, ill be first to jump ship.


I think it would be rather ridicules, to start collecting peoples information for a simple information forum. Lets not make ourselves bigger then you actually are or have to be for that matter. The more complicated you guys make this place, the more your going to draw people to other places and the more you can find yourself in trouble.

Im all for protecting the board from morons who abuse it, but keep it the way it is, people wont stand for dictator like restrictions, they will find somewhere else to go. Your dealing with the internet remember, the largest information database in the world.

[wavetar]

People are making this out to be a much bigger deal than it is. We noticed that 90% of new accounts created in the past year or so were zero-posters, with 'www' links in their profiles to spam sites (porn, viagra, college degrees, etc). Even though they weren't really causing us 'problems', we figured it would be nice to clean up the database...thus the removal of 2000+ of these accounts. Simple as that.

It's not our intent to police the board any more than we currently do. We're not looking to boot lurkers. Even if you have a zero-post account, as long as it doesn't have a www link to a spam site, you're safe.

We would like a convenient way to screen new registrations, mainly to try & keep off former scamming members who try & re-register under new names. The key to that would be to filter the spam accounts, so that requiring manual account activations wouldn't be a full time job. We could handle a few legit sign-ups per day, no problem.

I don't think a members-only referral would work, nor do I think requiring personal info or money is any sort of answer. A completely unbiased & accurate ranking system would be nigh-impossible to implement as well. Ham call signs required...I'm not a ham, and have no plans to ever be one, so that isn't an option either.

The 'report post' feature is our best control method available at the moment. I recently had a member who admins another board tell me he can't recall anyone using that feature on his board, even though he's had it for years. So, it seems members are making good use of it here. Keep it up.

Sweeping change is not necessary in my opinion, just some fine tuning on the back-end. Maybe a change from phpBB to vBulletin or some other type of platform would be the answer, but I leave that in Alex's capable hands.

Todd

[txshooter]

Before you guys all go nuts and wave cash around - Hold off.

I need to come up with something for you guys to put it towards - there's a crapton of cash in the server fund as it stands. Let me see where we stand, what we need, before you start waving Benjamin's

-Alex

Sorry if I flooded you with cash....must be a difficult problem to have.......

I simply feel that maybe this would be a solution for the buy/sell/trade/feedback section. I am not talking a huge amount for anyone to have to donate. $1-$2 dollars a year. The money could go into the server fund. Purchase a backup server for Photo and Manual storage? I am not looking to fill the pockets of the MODS, but maybe buy them a nice dinner at Dayton if they go? Just a suggestion to help out the board.

Hey if nothing else there can be a little fund in place that can be used for certain things that we already try to put a collection together to help members or their families in time of crisis and need.

Example -- Motsaber99http://batboard.batlabs.com/viewtopic.php?t=63552

Mods we appreciate everything that you do on a daily basis to make this the great community that it has become over the years. Thanks......

[OCSD117]

I have Been watching this post and wanted voice my major concern which was scammers. unfortunatley I did not have time to read all the posts to wich there was 30+ pages when i printed it out.

I had the misfortune to have to deal with MotoMax300, as did alot of you. Up until this point I had always had great dealings with board members but had always only made deals with members with many good feedbacks. I took a chance with Motomax and almost got burned. I have since made a couple of deals and beleive that if we do not use the feedback forum we are only hurting our selves. I always try to let other know how the deal worked out so that they are informed. I know that i have not always had feedback left for me. I use this resource before a deal to see how the person has been as a seller so far, of course anyone at any given point could attempt a scam the likelihood is diminished given good feedback.

I also wonder if there could be something added so that inorder to sell something you must have a verified ebay account so that others could see your feedback from there. I do not know much about how the board is written or onstructed but if it was made so that unless you had alink to your ebay sellers page then you could not sell. This might be totally un realistic but i bet many of the member have ebay accounts and if they are honest buyers and sellers then the likely hood is that that wuo dtransplate here.

I firmly believe that a required number of posts is not a proper way of seeing who is a scammer and who is not. It might eliminate those who create accounts to spam though. I know i personally do not have many post becaause usually the question that I might have an answer to is already answered before I get a chance to read the post, which is great! But it makes my post count low.

I think that trying to verify information form a new member might be hard given that the mods and admins are volunteers and this is not like a full time job. I would be willing to support/help out with this and like the idea of a team to help varif new user information. People that are not admins or mods basically supporting those people.

This is my .02 and any help i can give i will just ask! at some point I will finish reading this enitre post...

Mike

[alex]

RPDM313 - I see your point -

The point has always been - it's not eBay here. However, if you want to ask another member what their user name is on eBay to check their feedback before you deal with them - it's a great idea.

Secondly - as It's been mentioned in this thread - there is a lot of liability incurred when checking and collecting personal information, and it's not something we have the legal capability of taking on.

This just really means in the end - do your research as always, check the for sale feedback, and ask questions. Anyone who is a "good" person, should provide legitimate answers to any and all questions you ask, and go from there.

-Alex

[Bob]

The point has always been - it's not eBay here. However, if you want to ask another member what their user name is on eBay to check their feedback before you deal with them - it's a great idea.

How about creating a field in the profiles to enter an ebay user ID? It makes the info a little more accessible to the other users, but still leaves the onus with the profile owner to maintain the info. It doesn't have to be mandatory, just available to use.

[5-sides]

I do not like the idea that a high post count = good user. While my post count is not astronomical, and I willingly admit to taking more info away than I offer, I feel that I have something to contribute. I'm not really worried about myself, but for future users like me.

I have a yahoo account that I use as my "home" e-mail address, as it is easier to keep that when I change ISPs. I have not changed recently, but not too long ago, I had 3 ISPs in about a year. Keeping the yahoo account as my primary meant that I didn't have to update everyone multiple times.
I don't know any other members in the "real" world, and I am not a ham.
Many of the suggestions for changing the registration process would deny someone like me membership.

Now, based on what alex has proposed, I see his suggestions as a reasonable approach. It gets rid of the "deadwood" but should not prune any actual members. The few that may get caught up can apply for re-instatement, and return as they were before the scrub (at least that's how I read it)

This is a fairly specific environment, but do we want it to become completely cut off from the outside? Requiring a referral seems rather drastic--is the problem that bad? I don't believe I have been spammed from the board, or at least not enough to notice. As for Buy/Sell/Trade, that is up to the parties involved. It is facilitated by the board, but not really a board function. We enter into agreements on our own and have to decide how much to trust a known alias with our arrangements. It is nice to have the feedback forum, but that is still no guarantee that someone is on the up and up.

Changing the registration process might be a consideration, but I wonder how restrictive we want to be. At what point do we risk turning a good guy away? How many bad guys are we willing to accept to avoid turning a good guy away? Those are the questions that must be answered, and they are not quick and easy.

[Wowbagger]

First of all: Verizon wireless does not provide an E-Mail address to its users. Thus, any VZ user would not have an "ISP" email address. Thus filtering on email addresses really isn't a good idea. Plus, how do you know that "george@some.domain.com" is NOT a throw-away address created for spamming?

Next: Here's my suggestions for limiting the sign-up of bots for spamming:

1) Make the sign-up page be HTTPS rather than HTTP. This doesn't necessarily raise the bar enormously, but it does make it a bit less likely that a bot is going to be able to trigger the sign-up.

2) Make the sign-up send a confirmation email, with details on how to continue. Make the details be "not-bot friendly" - e.g.

Hi:
Somebody tried to sign this email address up for access to batboard.batlabs.com. If that WASN'T you, please ignore this email and accept our apologies - you need do nothing else. However, if you want to, hunt down whoever had IP address 192.168.0.1 on 31 May 2007 at 14:42 UTC as that is where the request came from.

If you did sign up, you need to confirm that you aren't a low-down spamming robot. First of all, DON'T click on this link:
this_is_a_trap.cgi?from=joe-at-example.com
as it is a trap for stupid bots.

Instead, go to the page where you signed up and enter this code:
blargle1234

Have the code be hashed back to the email address, so that it can be confirmed. Have the link say something like this:

Well, joe@example.com - either
a) You don't follow directions very well
b) You don't read before you click
c) You are a spambot.

Because you weren't supposed to click that link. If you screwed up, you can try again in 24 hours.

That should filter out 99% of the bots, as well as some percentage of fools who can't be bothered to read before they post.

[alex]

Well, the position on this has changed a bit since we upgraded the forum software. If in the cleanup (and I may do another one soon anyway) an account is lost, it's only lost to the users table, and not to another aspect of the forum. So I can simply re-insert that user after doing the above process and their data re-appears.

I already have a problem with the board upgrade with 56 users being "lost" right now, but as soon as I fix why it happened, and figure out what's required to be a valid user in the system, we'll have them back up and running as if nothing happened.

However, it sadly does leave those people in limbo.

In the end, as stated in the announcements - registrations are disabled right now until I can get the current new version of the board up to snuff in the next week or so. We can't take on more people until we fix the ones that are currently broken .

Additionally, what is probably going to happen - new people will end up on moderated status, where someone must approve their post. The nice thing is that I can have a large group of approvers, who don't necessarily have to be moderators.

Again, it's finishing figuring how to make all the new features work the best for everyone on the forum. We'll get it right... eventually .

[kf4sqb]

Alex, just a thought, but couldn't you integrate one of the "enter the text as shown below" things to the registration process? I'm sure you're familiar with what I'm talking about, but just in case you're not; its a small graphic with distorted and 'interfered with' text in it. The image is random, and you have to type the text, can't copy and paste, exactly as it appears in the graphic in the proper place on the page, or you can go no further. I don't see how a bot would have any chance of getting past that. I know, it may be a little while before you get to that point, but its an idea for when you do get there.

[alex]

Alex, just a thought, but couldn't you integrate one of the "enter the text as shown below" things to the registration process? I'm sure you're familiar with what I'm talking about, but just in case you're not; its a small graphic with distorted and 'interfered with' text in it. The image is random, and you have to type the text, can't copy and paste, exactly as it appears in the graphic in the proper place on the page, or you can go no further. I don't see how a bot would have any chance of getting past that. I know, it may be a little while before you get to that point, but its an idea for when you do get there.

Yeah, it's already there. But you'd be surprised - there are lots of software out there that can read poorly developed and designed "capcha's" (sp?).

Regardless, it's not a huge issue right this second, it's a back burner thing.

-Alex

[codeplug]

I must say that I realy like this site.
it is a wealth of information when I am out in the field.
working as a sub for mother moto they at times are not allways willing to help.
sometimes the enginering dept can be a pain to get answers to help with my job.

keep up the good work ALEX.
great site.
thank you for the time that you put in to it.

CODEPLUG,