Suggestion for Jordan...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jpec07
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Jpec07

Jpec07

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Forgotten Wing
Jordan, I've been noticing lately that there are alot of users on the boards (usually in excess of 200; which slows things way down). I was thinking that alot of the users that are on are actually bots for search engines and such. My suggestion, in order to drop some of this "dead weight" is to implement a human authenticity test on signin. I was thinking something along the lines of what geocities does to make sure they don't have bots setting up sites (have a picture with a distorted word or code, have a textbox next to it saying "type the word you see in the picture". Name the picture differently than the word, and change it regularly). With that system, the bots won't be able to log back on. It would free up alot of space here, I think. I dunno, maybe it's just me thinking this. What do other people think?
 
Yeh, they're only guests...
 
The only way you could stop them would be to use meta tags in your source code to stop search engines indexing the website. But that would stop new members signing up as GTP would not appear on any search results for any search engines.
 
Originally posted by Jpec07
Jordan, I've been noticing lately that there are alot of users on the boards (usually in excess of 200; which slows things way down). I was thinking that alot of the users that are on are actually bots for search engines and such. My suggestion, in order to drop some of this "dead weight" is to implement a human authenticity test on signin. I was thinking something along the lines of what geocities does to make sure they don't have bots setting up sites (have a picture with a distorted word or code, have a textbox next to it saying "type the word you see in the picture". Name the picture differently than the word, and change it regularly). With that system, the bots won't be able to log back on. It would free up alot of space here, I think. I dunno, maybe it's just me thinking this. What do other people think?
Click to expand...

Nice thought, well played. :)

GTP already has that human sign-in factor, because when you register you're emailed an activation code, which you then need to enter to become a full member.

Also, as Cobraboy says, these bots are coming in as guests, and we don't want to ip-ban them all because we actually want the site indexed. It's a tricky balance to attain, and it's something that is a major focus for anyone who's running a forums site.
 

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