This is just an FYI as it really doesn't affect any of you, but if you refer friends, or are asked, this is an explanation. We are now moderating new memberships. Today, we have already banned 11 spammers. If you go to the portal page (today) you will see their names in pink among the list of members who have visited the forum. I'm not sure why we have a sudden increase in spammers but the easiest thing to do is to moderate new memberships and this way we can check people out before we approve them. So, when people join, we just have to take a quick look at their profile, IP address, etc., and hit a button and they are good to go. It means folks will have to wait a few minutes to a few hours before they can post but Keith, Chris, Mike and I will check this often. This is designed to keep the forum clean from spam posts. A couple have gotten past us this week and then we have to clean it up. Charlie
Charlie...you have my greatest admiration. Our forum (ACL & SAL HS) became so overrun with spam sign-ups, I finally had to turn it off. Until somebody else volunteers to moderate it. That was 8 months ago and nobody has stepped forward. Buck
Folks, We have made one other change that you should know about and if you want to take care of this now, you will save aggravation later. We have had to do two things to combat spam. The first was described in the first post of this thread. Since the first step is only partially effective, the second will also help a lot. We have added a question that people will have to answer when they register. Unfortunately, we will have to force people to answer it when they update their profile also. The good news is that you only have to do this one time. So, if you want to do it now, you will have it done and won't have to deal with it later (such as a time when you update your profile later and can't remember why we are doing this and start swearing at me ). This will take approximately 30 seconds to do. Click here, then on the next page do the two things circled in green (from right to left.) That's it and again, if you do it now you won't have to do it again. I know this seems a little stupid but believe me, we have to do things like this and they do work. Charlie
