Friday, June 18, 2010

Spammer update

I’ve just checked in to see how the spammer situation is going these days, and it looks like ReCAPTCHA didn’t make any difference, and was actually letting through more spam accounts than before. Presumably this confirms that the main problem is human spammers who are being paid a few pennies to bypass a captcha and create an account.

For now, I’ve gone back to the BlogNomic trivia question that requires new signups to check the wiki and answer a simple question. If anyone has any further thoughts on approaches to take, let me know - the current question was letting through a few spammers before, so maybe we need to make it a little tougher. (As I think I’ve said before, we have a little more leeway in this than most blogs, since BlogNomic is a game, and forcing new players to solve a puzzle before they can join wouldn’t be entirely inappropriate.)

posted by Kevan at 18 Jun 2010 13:53:29 UTC Comments (4)

Comments

Bucky:

18-06-2010 15:35:47 UTC

While you’re at it, could you please have a look at the GNDT?  It doesn’t like text columns at the moment.

Kevan: he/him

18-06-2010 16:02:40 UTC

Fixed.

Incidentally, I’ve documented the CAPTCHA changing for the benefit of anyone else who has server access and wants to quickly change things.

Kevan: he/him

19-06-2010 15:25:05 UTC

Incidentally, I might as well link to this idler-detection script I was working on a couple of dynasties ago - it scrapes the profiles of the players listed in the sidebar, and highlights any that have been inactive for more than seven days.

Is there a reason that the game’s so quiet at the moment?

Bucky:

19-06-2010 16:20:26 UTC

Let’s see:
-The soldier ant very effectively stalled the subgame.  It will remain stalled until Darth Cliche adds more (softer) monsters to the encounter.
-The current rules disincentivize attacking except where a one-hit kill is possible.
-I (and presumably a couple of other Admins) were waiting on more comments on the oldest pending proposal.
-I am out of proposal slots.
-Darth Cliche is not making any particular efforts to keep the dynasty moving.