# Invite Only?



## David Pence (Sep 13, 2008)

As you may recall, I wanted to add a membership moderator for TTF. The reason is that we were getting a fair number of 'spammers.' Now, when I look a the list, you can tell that most of the members awaiting moderation are nothing but spammers.

So, I'm wondering it we should just become an invite only board, or go with the original plan of installing a membership moderator. What do you think?


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## YayGollum (Sep 13, 2008)

I don't remember any talk about anything called a membership moderator, but that idea sounds way better than the other one. What's a membership moderator? Somebody who people have to contact before they can become members? Somebody who has to somehow judge whether a person plans on employing this spam stuff or posting for better reasons? I've seen similar things before, and I don't think that they'd dissuade too many people from attempting to join. But still. Why not look even more inviting and just let moderating types ban those who choose to employ this spam stuff? Which is more difficult?


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## David Pence (Sep 13, 2008)

You can usually tell by the email address used to create an account. Purely random numbers or characters, or top level domains that point to stores or other junk sites.

Recently, I've had to delete a ton of attempts from Chinese sites selling who knows what.

So, a membership moderator would have to do some detective work, which considering the level of attempted spammers, is why I'm leaning towards invite only.


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## YayGollum (Sep 13, 2008)

Sounds like a choice between giving someone who's already volunteered to help the place out a little more work or looking less inviting. If those are our only choices. Mayhaps it is not just a little more work? Mayhaps it is especially difficult as well as time-consuming? I am unaware. Doesn't sound overly difficult. "Hm? This one is composed primarily of large gobs of pure evil? Entrance regretfully denied, then. Ah, the sorrow!" Click some button someplace.


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## Gothmog (Sep 13, 2008)

The problem I see with going for invite only is that we could lose some potential good members simply because they will go elsewhere. I don't know exactly how this system would be worked though.

I think that trying the membership moderator route first, should at least be attempted.


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## Ingwë (Sep 13, 2008)

I don't think it should be invite only board. I like the idea of membership moderator. 
@ Yay: it is not hard work. I think you just approve or disapprove users. Sometimes it is obvious that a certain member is a spammer. There are also databases on the internet with emails and IPs of spammers
@ WM: doesn't the vB anti-spam feature work? Capcha or something, I don't know how it is called


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## Ithrynluin (Sep 13, 2008)

I believe CAPTCHA can work against bots, but it can do little to dissuade human spammers from registering. 

I voted No, of course. Even though some of our members have been invited to come here by their friends, most people who come here find this place by chance, so taking such drastic measures would be detrimental to the forum.


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## Turgon (Sep 13, 2008)

I voted no too. While I appreciate what WM is saying I think the nature of a Tolkien Board does not lend itself well to invite only. How many of us know many Tolkien fans in our personal lives? I know I joined the Tolkien Forum for the reason that I had nobody to discuss Tolkien with on a day to day level. It's a tough problem though.

I am a member of a site for gamers, not really a clan, but a place where gamers of a certain mind set can get together and just play online for fun without all the annoying people who either take gaming way too seriously or just play to annoy other people. (It's called Old and Rubbish by the way - not that our players are limited to being Old and Rubbish we go from teens to fifty plus in age - the idea being if you're the kind of person who doesn't mind being called old or rubbish you'd fit right in... but I digest...) 

Anyway my point is that at one point the site became invite only as people felt that the site was drifting away from it's main aim which was to become a close knit fun community - the problem was we had no new blood coming in - and since it has opened up again we have gone from strength to strength tons of great new members have joined - the way we dealt with this was by creating lots and lots of moderators at all different levels to keep things running smoothly and this has worked a treat.

We have the main admins, then what we call the Pinks, who are under admins (we have about 4 of those) and help the admins with the technical side, the Greens who are general site mods (lots and lots of these 10+) and then the Blues who are responsible for each individual section (about 20 of these). In many ways it would seem as if the site is over modded (we only have about 200 regular members) but for us it has worked out, as the workload is spread out amongst the membership enabling us all to enjoy the site without getting bogged down in just running it.


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## Firawyn (Sep 13, 2008)

Looks like I'm thinking the same as everyone else. I say no.

I think that _especially_ with the upcoming Hobbit movie, we need to keep the doors open to anyone on the net. We would not be half the forum we are today if we'd been an "invite only" forum back when Peter Jackson's movies came out. A lot of out most loyal members were movie fans first (nobody be insulted by that, I'll be the first to admit I was one of them).

The Membership Moderator is a good idea. And as Gothmog pointed out, it should _at least_ be attempted. 

Dave, a few months ago you put out a call for new moderators. Several people volunteered (myself included) and I expect that we are all still more than willing. I think it's time you took action on your own request. We're all loyal to you. Let us help.

Firawyn


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## Starbrow (Sep 13, 2008)

I wouldn't have been able to join or found other Tolkien fans if this was an invite only site. I dearly hope that the membership can be managed through moderators.


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## YayGollum (Sep 13, 2008)

*looks at the poll, then twitches* Argh. Everybody agreeing. People volunteering to assist with that which is haranguing enough to get this Webmaster person to write anything? I don't know. Seems unnatural. Warm as well as somehow fuzzy feelings? Creepy foreign material! Community spirit? Feh, Bah, as well as, Humbug! But it is my home, this The Tolkien Forum Dot Com. Gots to stand by convictions regarding it, yes? No. You're crazy. Invite only board, all of the way! The Webmaster person, famous for pointing out lacks of democracy, must have a reason for his warning of, "I'll probably do it this way, anyways. The poll just looks pretty." The membership moderator thing must be nigh impossible! Ah, moderators to be lax, as it's always been!


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## David Pence (Sep 13, 2008)

It seems that we'll continue to moderate new Members. Ithrynluin has kindly offered to help keep these evil spammers off TTF.


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## Illuin (Sep 13, 2008)

Well, if you do indeed need some help sifting out the garbage, I will certainly lend a hand. I have observed this forum very meticulously for the four months I’ve been here (350 quality posts in four months should let anyone know that I am not messing around). But, I haven’t witnessed personally these trifle spammers really affecting this forum in a significant way. Just blow them off; delete them; ignore them. Why get all worked up over trivial posts, that for the most part go unnoticed? It’s not like it’s a “plague”. It’s the internet; the dam is broken; the enemy can not be held back by force. This forum has fared quite well as I see it. If you need a hand taking out the trash so this forum retains its integrity, just let me know; but the invite only idea is not something that will aid your ultimate goal; which is to add life and rekindle this incredibly enjoyable forum.


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## Uminya (Sep 13, 2008)

It's definitely better to keep TTF the way it is, with a membership mod. I ran a board with very few people, and even then it was hit by spambots pretty much every day. It does indeed take a little bit of sleuthing, but keeping membership by-and-large "open" will prove better for the site.


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## Prince of Cats (Sep 14, 2008)

This is the only board I regularly post on that isn't invite only, but I, too, believe we shouldn't go the route of invite only

I never would have became a member here if it was invite only, because I didn't know any members. I did have to wait around a month, though, for my application to be processed. 

This is the only place I have to talk about semi-'geeky' stuff, and meeting all you cool people here has allowed me to foster that part of myself and open up to people who I wouldn't have necessarily identified as like-minded before. Never would have had that if this board wasn't open registration


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## Valandil (Oct 1, 2008)

I just voted no - for the reasons stated by many others.

Dave - at Entmoot we've had much the same problem. The site owner set up something which involved a question where the applicant had to spell the word 'baggins' or 'bilbo' or something - and even took into account a number of mispellings. 

Can you implement anything like that?


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## Ithrynluin (Oct 1, 2008)

My suggestion is that would-be members write a paragraph about why they would like to join The Tolkien Forum. I think this would be a big deterrent for spammers; I doubt any of them would (or could) go out of their way and write something halfway coherent and intelligible. I don't know if it's doable, though.


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## David Pence (Oct 1, 2008)

Read this ...


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## Alcuin (Oct 2, 2008)

This has probably been suggested, but … what about captcha or some similar system? I think they offer free captchas. 

Of course, captchas only capture machines; they don’t capture live bad guys. I suppose that real baddies would simply behave 3 or 4 days and then strike out?


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## Durin's Bane (Oct 2, 2008)

Is there an advertising campaign underway or something? Seeing how many users are registering atm...


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## GuardianRanger (Oct 2, 2008)

> This has probably been suggested, but … what about captcha or some similar system? I think they offer free captchas.
> 
> Of course, captchas only capture machines; they don’t capture live bad guys. I suppose that real baddies would simply behave 3 or 4 days and then strike out?



captchas have generally been broken for a while now. It appears that groups outsource the solving of captchas for pennies. A great post can be found on the captcha-breaking economy here.


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