Closing the Gate

[Vicious88]

Until Further Notice, Infohub Forums is an Invitation Only community. This is being done so that spam bots can no longer clog members list with their presence.

If you would like to invite a user to join us, please have them contact a member of the administration (or you can contact us directly) with the user name and email address they would like associated with their accounts. We will then email that account with their user name and a temporary password.

To any unregistered users who might be reading this: In the blue toolbar just below the Infohub Forums logo, you will see a "Contact Us" option. You may use this page to request an invitation if you have a sincere interest in joining us, but do not currently know any of our members.

I am sorry that it has come to this, but I can think of no other suitable alternative to preventing these spam bots from hassling us further.

As an additional note, I will be deleting all banned users from our databases following this post. If you wish to appeal a ban, you will have to use the "Contact Us" option.

[Vicious88]

The flood gates are sealed, the scum removed, and a brighter future shines down upon us with a smile.

[Mike]

Oh noes border fence.

[Boxofit]

I was thinking about suggesting this the other day. Also, I made this thread sticky so unregistered browsers have an easier time finding it.

[ArthurDent]

Oh noes border fence.

Must.... resist... Erge.... to make.... racist...... joke....

[Tom]

Why don't we just change our current email verification system? Right now we let users verify their own emails - which is actually supposed to stop spam bots from registering, but apparently does not. I can change this setting so that all new accounts must have their email addresses verified by an Administrator. This way we can manually check the registered email and IP addresses to prevent any damage.

This would also prevent a problem we had in phpBB3 which was people registering, and then forgetting to verify their email address, so their accounts just sat in our database doing nothing.

Additionally I have changed our human verification process, so we now use question & answer verification instead of reCAPTCHA - we'll see if this is any more effective.

[Vicious88]

I just now realized that I've made a grave mistake and neglected to update this thread. Clearly, our registration process is open again to the public, and specific anti-spam measures are now in place.

[ipagevsfatcow]

I would reach out to the people at Foursquare and Gowalla and present them with this idea.
I think this post is a great way to start it off too.
Great idea, hope it gains some traction and we as people of earth start making more serious inroads on helping others not so fortunate.
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[Ninja]

Until Further Notice, Infohub Forums is an Invitation Only community. This is being done so that spam bots can no longer clog members list with their presence.
I would reach out to the people at Foursquare and Gowalla and present them with this idea.
I think this post is a great way to start it off too.
Great idea, hope it gains some traction and we as people of earth start making more serious inroads on helping others not so fortunate.

Oh, the irony.