Based on the 4 current spam accounts I have looked at, I believe that we can ban all the spammers of this type by banning the IP 79.18*. There are no non-spam accounts with this IP, but I would still like to see what you think about such an action before taking it.
It may be worth contacting Telecom Italia. And i would guess that they’re not the problem rather one of their customers.
If we block an IP, then they get either a 404 or redirected to a URL of our choice.
I’d be for blocking these, at least on an interim basis. Thanks Wak.
I’d probably be mildly against, if only because the spam problem we have isn’t that onerous to deal with and I’d hate to exclude legitimate players.
If we do block them, I’d redirect to a page (probably written in Italian) which explains why they’re blocked, and having an email-address-in-an-image that they can send to if they’re humans. The address would probably be one of the superadmins’.
Italian, English, Chinese, German.
We can reuse this page as necessary.
English seems fine, if they’re genuinely trying to join or investigate a site written entirely in English. English and random strings of numbers.
BlogNomic is an online Nomic: a self-modifying game where changing the rules is part of the game. Players make blog posts proposing additions or alterations to the ruleset, discussing and casting votes in the comments: if enough vote in favour, the rules are changed and play continues.
The game has been running since 2003 and resets every month or so. Have a look around the wiki for more information and history. New players are always welcome and can join in the game at any time.
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ais523:
Whois says it’s a /15, so you’d want to block 79.18.*.* and 79.19.*.* to get the entire range (“INTERBUSINESS” registered to Telecom Italia). http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://www.interbusiness-mnt.it/&ei=OEMVS-SMIYeL4QbNu4TcBg&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAkQ7gEwAA&prev;=/search?q=INTERBUSINESS&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&hs=7LB shows that the range seems to be for business customers in Italy, with a particular ISP; so if the range is banned, some Italians might have to connect from home, not work, if they wanted to play BlogNomic.