In Response to kornz (#38420):

I remember you.

In Response to deerboy (#38422):

thank you?

In Response to kornz (#38471):

Do I know you?

In Response to deerboy (#38422):

I love that song

Remeber when people told Phillip when spammers posted here?

In Response to zamphir (#38490):

I'm sort of surprised this forum isn't more frequently inundated with spam, as it seems simple enough to join and begin posting comments in active discussions. Aside from this one particular thread here, i assumed Jon and Phillip were working some kind of super-freaky anti-spam voudou which distinguished this website's fora from the vast majority of others i've viewed.

In Response to Teledildonix (#38497):

The forced preview before submitting breaks most of the automated bots out there. That, and it's a completely custom built forum package, so an automated bot to harass us would pretty much need to be custom built.

Most website forums rely on one of the well-known packages (like phpBB, slascode, or the like) and thus generic bots can be written to attack any forum that runs off those packages. The people who use these bots to generate spam are lazy lowlifes who usually don't know how they work, having bought them from a self-proclaimed hacker. If the bot doesn't work on a site, they move on until they find one that works.

I'm actually surprised that a bot has been written for this site. Philip is probably already on it as any of the other Dumbrella sites that use the forum package are now at risk as well.

In Response to Dynedain (#38498):

You vastly underestimate Phillip's laziness, and also the size of his To Do list.

More importantly, odds are good that if nobody's told him about this spam... He doesn't know.

And I haven't told him.

In Response to zamphir (#38499):

Dunno... he seemed pretty proactive about a bug recently that was auto-reported.

And I haven't told him.

That makes two of us.

In Response to Dynedain (#38503):

It wouldn't have mattered much anyway, I was busy visiting multiple distilleries in Scotland anyway, and wasting far too much money at Bruichladdich, which I hope to enjoy the fruits of a decade (or so) hence.

I deleted the BBCode spam, but left the half completed sentence ones, I wasn't sure what to make of those. They could belong to a real person, and we shouldn't delete their posts just because they learned English from Yoda.

The Preview blocks a lot of spam, but I also use (stolen from Slashcode) formkeys, which are basically keys that are created and inserted into the database when you load the initial "posting" form, and then on any submission it checks that that key is there or it returns an error. There are ways around it, but in general, it's not worth it for non-distributed packages. I think that some forum/comment spam these days is actually underpaid workers in various countries loading forms and cutting and pasting into them. The advantage is that it gets around any automated system.

In Response to phillip (#38531):

I just shut off Lonely Goatherd forum posting privileges. From now on, you must be a registered user to post.

I'm happy to reconsider this decision if anyone can argue compellingly for LG reinstatement but I can't think of a single reason for it.

Also, I would rather be drawing comics than deleting comments.

In Response to jon (#38569):

That's totally understandable-- i would love you to be undistracted so you can keep dishing out more of these colorful installments, such as today's Domain Eighteen goodness [goats.com] [my favorite panel was in the lower left]. So let's hope all future fans will appreciate participation in the spam-free forums at the expense of their initial minute of registration.

I remember when "Zot!" was something from some corny old B.C. comics that my dad had in paperback format during the early 1970s when i was a little kid. I suppose they were never very funny; but i was still learning how to read, so i thought their occasional poetry was neat. Henceforth from today, however, i will forever associate "Zot!" with potent pan-dimensional sporkletasticness on par with some of my favorite HHGTTG moments.

Remember when we were getting all that spam, and then the powers that be issued smackdowns of furious vengeance?

In Response to pupdog (#39170):

Lies and heresy! It never happened. Your statement: doubleplusungood, malquoted; rectify! Please report to the nearest ingsoc reprogramming station for immediate correction.

You're safer with your ankle bracelet on. Speaking of "spam", your supervisor/ employer/ neighborhood-watch shall be inspecting in your pants to make sure you haven't been moisturizing yourself with any unauthorized substances. Rejoice, Comrade!

(Man, maybe i've been listening to too many Jello Biafra lyrics [cantr.net] recently! tee hee hee)

In Response to pupdog (#39170):

I wouldn't call it furious vengeance, more like recalcitrant laziness.

In Response to Dynedain (#39176):

Everything's relative around here...

Remember when the forums used to be slow like some kind of wet hairy slow thing?

And now they are fast like a shaved glistening quick thing.

Change man, change. It comes for us all.

In Response to tor (#39182):

Yeah, I asked Philip about that a couple months ago and he said it was one of the other hosted sites being a resource hog. I assume he either setup some fancy caching/load balancing features for them, or took the plunge and setup another server.

In Response to Teledildonix (#39172):

Hm... a memory failure? "You are not remembering correctly, comrade!"

Anyway, good to see the spam gone, even if it means that Mark V Shaney isn't going to write here anymore. ;)