GearHead Forum mass user evaporation!

[Kornel Kisielewicz]

Due to the amount of spam that was recently happening on the forums, huge amounts of fake spam-users were registered, so I did a serious cleaning in the user tables.

Basically, if you had 0 posts your account has probably been deleted -- feel free to re-register though!

Total killcount 4092. Rest in pieces...

On the up side, I don't know if it's just me, but the forum seems to be working much more smoothly now .

[Rowanthepreacher]

YOU KILLED THE LURKERS! You heartless bastard!

Lurkers are people too! Shy people! Now they'll feel rejected, they'll turn to drugs and then they'll kill themselves with a kitchen knife in the bathroom!

Do you see what you have wrought?

[cowofdoom78963]

Good thing I made my first post before this unspeakable genocide.

[PlaintextMan]

I'm beginning to think that we need another such an evaporation. The sheer number of (apparently-) spammers that lurk here is annoying. They just don't give up, do they?

[KA101]

I'd guess 3-4 Baconators join the forum per day, based on the "newest member" line.  That said, as of 28 Apr 2012, 13:56:40 forum time, there are 50 fewer members currently registered than KK deleted: 4042 v. 4092.  We probably don't need to roll around shrieking "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" just yet.

(Purely humorous)

"I vant your clicks, your google spoofing, und your personal information."--Ahnuld131

[threetoast]

I think that the few, if any, non-spammer accounts that were vaporized are an acceptable loss.

I'd imagine that the presence of several thousand spammer accounts would drive people away more strongly than having their account deleted. Especially when the spammers outnumber real accounts by several orders of magnitude.

[Rowanthepreacher]

Wow! I totally agree. Spammers are a huge problem. almost as huge as my penis. Find out how to enlarge your tiny, twisted, impotent, embarrassing member today!

[KA101]

I love it.  Went to check on the wiki and found a new bacon page on the importance of building lots of links to optimize one's search engine ranking.  Here's some bacon in favor of hiring baconators to improve your website!

(Calling for KK probably wouldn't achieve anything: his own userpage was full of bacon, last time I checked.  I'm starting to understand why Burzmali doesn't seem to be around anymore.)

[Erathoniel]

If there's a need for admin presence, you can e-mail me at erathoniel@live.com. Hopefully my spam filter's up for every bot in the world seeing this.

[PlaintextMan]

Will keep that in mind. Thanks, Erathoniel.

[Erathoniel]

Is there any way for us to see wiki user IP's at account creation and/or block whole IP blocks? I have a suspicion our spammers may be coming from the same place, and if nothing else it would probably kill some of the server load if we denied them account creation access.

EDIT: Oh yeah, also, my spam filter eats a lot of personal messages, so if you don't get a reply be ready to wait a little bit in between me checking my junk mail.

[Erathoniel]

I'm gonna put out there that I recommend KA101 for promotion to wiki admin, since he finds a lot of spam and highlights it for me, but can't yet do anything real about it. Plus, he's a regular constructive contributor, and my fellow sysop seems to have disappeared.

Also, I'm really unreliable, as my regular history of hiatuses has shown.

[KA101]

Appreciate the compliment, Erathoniel.  Gonna object to some of it, though: really haven't made much of a wiki contribution (was derailed for an hour or two checking on the Haiho) and, well, I'll admit to creating a lot of forum traffic but that's about it.  Pixie sprite is gonna take a while, and apologies therefor.

Re bacon-finding, I was just hitting "Random Page".  When I can randomly get a new bacon page six times in a row, well, I'm glad I spent the time beating UT2k4 so I can apply the chain-callouts.  Makes an otherwise dreary task far more rewarding.

[Work is slow at the moment--can pick up without much warning, though.  I can't guarantee that I'll be any more reliable than the current staff.]

[Erathoniel]

Don't overestimate me. 

[KA101]

Well, work's picked up.  Might not be in for my usual "hours at a time" for a while.

That said: my "hit random page" bacon-finder just spiked: 8 consecutive bacon pages found and paved.  That's a lot of bacon.  Problem is, Erathoniel's cleanup effort had reduced things to the point where random rolls generally come up useful in one or two tries nowadays.  (He's noted that his connection has trouble with sex-related stuff, such as three of the pages I've just paved.  I don't know whether a user can change page titles, but if I can I don't know where the button is.)

Anyone mind if I pave KK's user page?  It's been bacon since 29th Nov 2011.  I don't think he'd even notice.