Yea well that's the difficult thing, to make people register. Most of the guests are from search sites viewing threads. Making them register is how to make an active community like we used to have and that's what we need to think out a good way to do.
Didn't mean make them, i was thinking if they wanna view certain threads (not all) just have those threads grayed out if they wanna sign up and view then its great if not it just tells them i really need this info on the thread to help me so why not join. In one way its good having visitors coming in it shows that MGF is still one of the fav forums sites on the net.
Let's say that if they want to see the No-CD/DVD section, they should register. That I can agree. Anything else should be free for view. On the other hand, that might make people to go away even more. With the rise of the warez forums and private trackers getting more and more members, forums like Megagames, GBW and GCW are in dire need of changing the identity. Cracks are easier to get in our days and kids know that they had to stay away of warez discussions on those three sites. So they choose the private trackers forums or the warez forums, because they can speak freely about their pirated copy. Maybe it's time for those three old sites to become more inclined towards gaming news, previews, reviews and discussions, rather than being about how to get the latest crack (and let's not forget that out there are now protection like Steamworks, SecuROM/SolidShield/StarForce online activation or WindowsLive, protection for which cracks are not allowed in a rather vast number of countries).
I only suggested that and as i said i don't want to make anyone register, as wolf said warez are on the rise especially online warez/cracks once those kind of sites beef up there security they might come back to these kind of forums but untill then we can't do anything.
Hey guys, Isn't there a capcha or something while registering? Check this out: It looks like bots or something. May be making signing up with the boards more stringent or something will help in reducing the spam too. There are just so many spam posts around these days..
Yea unfortunately lots of spam bots. I just checked and Capcha is enabled, still lots of bot signups.
You might be interested in what I did on another forum. You can't stop bots signing up, but you can keep them quiet. Firstly, create an Introduction forum (if you don't already have one). Make it not visible to guests. Include an announcement in it, telling new people to intro themselves, and most importantly, asking them to request membership of a Members group. Alter all the other forums so that you have to be in the Members group to be able to post anything. Mods will need to monitor the Intro forum and determine if person or bot. Then the mod can approve the membership request. If the bot came to spam, that's fine, no guest or spider will see it. It's all in one place so you can delete multiple threads at once. So far, on that site, no bots have read the announcement, therefore none applied to the group, so no widespread spam. The only downside is the extra work and vigilance required of moderators, however once you approve someone its much less likely they would cause trouble.
Excellent idea.. But isn't it a bit too tiresome? How about an email confirmation with code during sign up? Is it already there? I registered sooo long ago that I have honestly forgotten how it was.
That's a good idea but will require more manual work. Email validation before posting is already on, doesn't seem to stop bots.
Thanks, welcome again, I assume you mean. This forum changes its look more often than a snake changes its skin. It would be nice to able to choose a light-coloured skin, but oh well. As for stopping bots, whatever you put on the signup page, they already have scripts that can read the capchas, they use real mailboxes (usually gmail), and etc. What I proposed is something new. It is certainly more tiresome for the mods though. It's up to you of course what you want to do, I simply provided a solution that works for me.
The only problem is that most mods/admins are not always around to get rid of bots everytime plus most mods/admins work so its hard to get online & work at the same time.
