Forum clearout

Post by **9balldotcom** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 3:12 pm

All non responded posts on the forum within a set period of time have been removed. Only currently live posts on the forum are still there.

Due to recent abuse of the forum,access to the forum in future will be by email only......and you will therfor only get access by Senior admin authorising you.Anyone wishing to join the forum will have their details forwarded to the Senior Admin to permit them to join.
I have been allowed Admin status to edit the forum and manage it in the absence of Senior Admin.

The forum is somewhere you can have your say on many subjects within reason,but as a place to spam,it is not.

Post by **9balldotcom** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:51 pm

Today has been the first day in along time where there has been no spam on the foum.
Heres hoping this will continue

Sophisticated Beggar · Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:52 am

Where have all the posts gone?

It sucks if they have all been deleted... and this skin thing sucks too. I like the bog standard default one, but it doesn't seem to matter which one is selected.

Post by **9balldotcom** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 10:40 am

Anyone previoulsy registered on the forum and able to make posts like you have, needs to do nothing.
The only people who will have a problem posting is guests and non registered members to the forum.'
This security measure is in place to prevent the abuse of our forum in recent months.

You will notice that as a result of this action,the forum is spam free for the past few days.

RichardCranium · Post by **RichardCranium** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:11 pm

Yes, the spam was annoying but not half as annoying as the "forum clearout". How about a notice next time? Maybe that way some of the people that wanted to save something, etc would be given an opportunity to do so. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

I know it's not a democracy rather a cheerocracy and you're the cheertator, sheesh.

2 tears in a bucket.....

deraltefritz · Post by **deraltefritz** » Fri Sep 15, 2006 4:46 am

What exactly has been cleared out?
I've read about those spam robot messages about Viagra or something.
Did entire threads get deleted or what?

zwylle · Post by **zwylle** » Fri Sep 15, 2006 7:09 am

deraltefritz wrote:Did entire threads get deleted or what?

Most of them.
Everything that was not posted recently has been deleted.
That's a little odd, because the spam only was in recent posts.. but hey, weren't you tired of looking at most of these threads anyways :P

Post by **9balldotcom** » Fri Sep 15, 2006 7:33 am

The forum needed a clearout.....I just got carried away slightly

No one has died... so far.....George Bush is still in charge...

There were loads ie many of dead posts which frankly were mostly a waste of space.....if some posts were deleted in error....tough...go on shoot me......I bet you cant shoot me if im looking you straight in the eye though.

What I dont want to see is people who rarely post on the forum posting just to have a moan at the fact the forum has been cleared out....come here with something better to say or clear off back to your holes.

We just got rid of a bunch of spammers......,but kiddies bleating about losing posts.....

Youve made your points....now please let it be.....or ill tell

mummy

Sophisticated Beggar · Tue Sep 26, 2006 8:58 am

Can we have another clearout please? --> http://www.celeris.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1113

Just don't mess with the skins this time !!

Post by **9balldotcom** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 2:50 pm

id already removed the post fore i read this....i dont know how that one got in but needless to say...hes been banned

He must have been hiding here all the time (unless Debs thought it was a nice wee boy with a cute name and authorised him) LOL.....cos im seeing about five or six emails from bots trying to access the forum...at least theyre all using strange names and are not given access.

Dont know how that one got through......but suffice to say,anyone posting total rubbish not associated with vp3 and not associated with a particular post in general risks getting removed from forum access.

I think youll agree though that these stringent mehtods have cleared things up the past couple of weeks and has given us back OUR forum for OUR use.

zwylle · Post by **zwylle** » Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:57 pm

Check the userlist of this forum and you will find hundreds of them.

They are pretty easy to spot since most of them have commercial websites in their profile.
Many have repeating names just with a counter.

I had about 200 of them on the VP3 Help Board.
If you want to get rid of them you have to clean out the user list, fastest way to do that is by directly editing the database.
(Better pull a backup before you do that)

Post by **9balldotcom** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:39 am

You will notice that the forum membership is dropping as you can see from the main page.
This will continue to drop as I have begun in earnest to weed out the trash of hundreds of bot accounts we have.

When i stopped last night we had gone from 1300 nearly down to 1100 and so far today we are down to almost 800.

I will continue to remove these names...it will take time...but it shall be done.

Nam[BE] · Post by **Nam[BE]** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 8:25 am

Thanks Hugh... I'm sure other regular users appreciate it as well.

Post by **9balldotcom** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 4:24 pm

Down to 627 now..... the mission continues....

Sophisticated Beggar · Fri Oct 06, 2006 6:50 am

Great sniper work Hugh!

Post by **9balldotcom** » Sat Oct 07, 2006 3:48 pm

Under 500 now....IM GOING TO KILL EM ALLL I TEll ya!!!!

Post by **9balldotcom** » Tue Oct 10, 2006 4:08 pm

Ok folks Im pleased to announce my mission is over.
Ive managed to get the forum down to a manageable 341 names.

The vast mojority of false time wasting accounts have been deleted,although there are still two or three i remove each day of bot accounts pending.

We are more or less spam free now,so we can say our forum is almost all our own again.

Snoozehughes · Post by **Snoozehughes** » Wed Oct 11, 2006 2:38 pm

Nice work Hugh!