Hiya,
When viewing the user profile for myself - I see I have a number of fields that I can have associated with my account, but, they do not appear on the "edit profile" page.. [ I'd like to include my avatar ]
Is there a particularly strong case for allowing/barring these? No strong feeling on this really - just curious..
user profiles
Good questions.
The fields have been deliberately edited out of the visible pages. So no genuine poster should be able to put stuff in them. But the fields are still there - hidden. I guess I should edit the profile page so no blanks appear there either. Why do this?
Well sadly Forums are juicy targets for spammers. If you take no protective measures a Forum quickly becomes overwhelmed with invitations to elongate your anatomy, get somebody else rich and other amazing & peculiar activities. This drives the genuine posters away and the Forum dies ... Trying to keep the spammers out without making it too difficult for genuine posters to join up and make their first post is a hard trick. Particulary if you don't want to be watching over the Forum 24/7.
Mass spammers use 'bots' to signup and post. These bots don't realise that there is no way to enter the info on the official sign-up page (which they bypass) and so automatically populate those expected but now hidden fields. That means most spammers can be easily identified, blocked and stopped, usually before they make their first post. Its a simple but effective trick.
A few make it through and appear here. If you check the other thread you will see a list of those removed. The other 99.9..% we never see and are not listed. Google 'phpBB' and you see the problem some unprotected Forums have.
Re avatars - well that's my prejudice really. Checkout those Forums that do allow them - there is always a selection of 'nodding dog' avatars that the poster must think very cool but can become an amazing irritant to others (me!). I wouldn't want to be part of a style police on avatars so I thought it easier to have none. Can you humour me on that one?
It also has implications on server performance & bandwidth.
Admin
PS the main reason spammers populate Forums is not to get *you* to click thru to their scam sites - but to be picked up by Google. The more links to a website Google finds the higher the site's ranking and the higher up the Google search results (on almost anything) the spammer's site appears. If you plot thru the effect on traffic driven to that site it is a very attractive and profitable activity driven by the ability to post these links in Forums at no cost. The damage done to community forums is of no consideration to these people. We, and Google, do a number of other things to try and frustrate this abuse.
The fields have been deliberately edited out of the visible pages. So no genuine poster should be able to put stuff in them. But the fields are still there - hidden. I guess I should edit the profile page so no blanks appear there either. Why do this?
Well sadly Forums are juicy targets for spammers. If you take no protective measures a Forum quickly becomes overwhelmed with invitations to elongate your anatomy, get somebody else rich and other amazing & peculiar activities. This drives the genuine posters away and the Forum dies ... Trying to keep the spammers out without making it too difficult for genuine posters to join up and make their first post is a hard trick. Particulary if you don't want to be watching over the Forum 24/7.
Mass spammers use 'bots' to signup and post. These bots don't realise that there is no way to enter the info on the official sign-up page (which they bypass) and so automatically populate those expected but now hidden fields. That means most spammers can be easily identified, blocked and stopped, usually before they make their first post. Its a simple but effective trick.
A few make it through and appear here. If you check the other thread you will see a list of those removed. The other 99.9..% we never see and are not listed. Google 'phpBB' and you see the problem some unprotected Forums have.
Re avatars - well that's my prejudice really. Checkout those Forums that do allow them - there is always a selection of 'nodding dog' avatars that the poster must think very cool but can become an amazing irritant to others (me!). I wouldn't want to be part of a style police on avatars so I thought it easier to have none. Can you humour me on that one?
It also has implications on server performance & bandwidth.
Admin
PS the main reason spammers populate Forums is not to get *you* to click thru to their scam sites - but to be picked up by Google. The more links to a website Google finds the higher the site's ranking and the higher up the Google search results (on almost anything) the spammer's site appears. If you plot thru the effect on traffic driven to that site it is a very attractive and profitable activity driven by the ability to post these links in Forums at no cost. The damage done to community forums is of no consideration to these people. We, and Google, do a number of other things to try and frustrate this abuse.
aaaghh. shot down in flames - my avatar is a dog.. immobile, but canine nevertheless. <embarrasment>a selection of 'nodding dog' avatars
spambot traps - loveit - that's a really nice piece of lateral thinking.
Also - bandwidth - yep - I keep forgetting that little gem. And I mean gem, because that's what it starts to cost if you're not careful - Agree entirely!
cheers for the response, and even without my furry dice / nodding dog, I'll still be a happy regular at the STF. Keep up the good work!