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https://www.microbehunter.com/microscopy-forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=15554
I see what you mean but we don't get that many new members per week, do we? Can there not just be some hurdle for someone to become a member such as having to say why you want to join, or something similar? I've also noticed the forum has become a lot quieter than it was a few months ago...dtsh wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 4:43 pmIt's hard to balance vetting new members and fighting spam, if you make it harder for the spambots to get in, you also make it harder for new members to sign up.
The issue isn't helped by the fact the spam gangs often use compromised machines to run the programs which trawl the internet for forums and the software to create the bogus accounts and posts. I think the average person would be absolutely amazed at the sheer number of compromised hosts on the internet, its so common I'd be willing to be some of the members here are using compromised computers unkowingly. There are often patterns that can be found to identify spam, but they change over time as the spammers update their toolset and there's a cost in time for someone to maintain all of the anti-spam efforts on the site.
Methods of combatting the spam can take up time, money, computer power, etc which all drive the cost of maintaining the site ever upwards until it stops being worth the effort. If you rely on moderators to manually remove it, you need more moderators which often involves adding privileges that will eventually get abused. If you put too many obstacles in the way of creating new accounts or new posts you frustrate new users and they go elsewhere.
I don't mean to make it sound bleak, but it's hard work fighting spam without making it harder on legitimate users.
yeah but that can't be easily automated. You want a filter that doesn't require the conscious attention of the admin.
Such a question already exists and obviously imposes little impediment.Wes wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 6:58 pmThis is an old issues, yes. I raised it some years ago
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8276
What I suggest is to have a question at the time one registers. Something simple yet relevant to the hobby
for example
"Which part of the microscope do you look through with your eye?"
A)eyepiece
B)potato
C)1776
D)none of the above
I had no idea but I have seen it on other forums. Maybe the question is too easy?dtsh wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 7:28 pmSuch a question already exists and obviously imposes little impediment.Wes wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 6:58 pmThis is an old issues, yes. I raised it some years ago
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8276
What I suggest is to have a question at the time one registers. Something simple yet relevant to the hobby
for example
"Which part of the microscope do you look through with your eye?"
A)eyepiece
B)potato
C)1776
D)none of the above
The problem is that the tech is getting better; it's pretty trivial these days to programatically parse a simple question and get the answer. At the point you start tripping up the program, humans tend to be failing as well. There are so many search engines and AI backends one can query to get reasonable utility quickly, which I am sure the spammers are utilizing.
A bot might be able to answer that, but I'm pretty sure it'd keep out most of the new users. It certainly would have me.
+1LouiseScot wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 4:49 pmI see what you mean but we don't get that many new members per week, do we? Can there not just be some hurdle for someone to become a member such as having to say why you want to join, or something similar? I've also noticed the forum has become a lot quieter than it was a few months ago...dtsh wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 4:43 pmIt's hard to balance vetting new members and fighting spam, if you make it harder for the spambots to get in, you also make it harder for new members to sign up.
The issue isn't helped by the fact the spam gangs often use compromised machines to run the programs which trawl the internet for forums and the software to create the bogus accounts and posts. I think the average person would be absolutely amazed at the sheer number of compromised hosts on the internet, its so common I'd be willing to be some of the members here are using compromised computers unkowingly. There are often patterns that can be found to identify spam, but they change over time as the spammers update their toolset and there's a cost in time for someone to maintain all of the anti-spam efforts on the site.
Methods of combatting the spam can take up time, money, computer power, etc which all drive the cost of maintaining the site ever upwards until it stops being worth the effort. If you rely on moderators to manually remove it, you need more moderators which often involves adding privileges that will eventually get abused. If you put too many obstacles in the way of creating new accounts or new posts you frustrate new users and they go elsewhere.
I don't mean to make it sound bleak, but it's hard work fighting spam without making it harder on legitimate users.
Louise
I'd venture a guess that most amateurs wouldn't care what the resolution is numerically. Most professional microscope users wouldn't either. I know I've never bothered to calculate it for any of my objectives. If it was a required question, I *might* look it up to comply, but I'd be just as likely to blow it off and not bother to join. I doubt that's the intent.How about "calculate the resolution of a microscope with a 63/1,4 objective coupled to a 0.9 condenser at 550 nm"?
It was more of joke suggestion but I am surprised that a bot would be able to comprehend and answer the question (maybe have a question posed in an image with some skewing like those pesky captchas).dtsh wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 7:58 pmThe problem is that the tech is getting better; it's pretty trivial these days to programatically parse a simple question and get the answer. At the point you start tripping up the program, humans tend to be failing as well. There are so many search engines and AI backends one can query to get reasonable utility quickly, which I am sure the spammers are utilizing.
Take for example the origins of email spam. Early on it was jerks, manually sending emails, but that quickly became automated. At first you could just filter the jerks by network and most of the problem went away...for a while. Eventually, they started using compromised computers to send email for them, which worked for a while until dynamic block lists were created and programs to run on the server were deveoped to evauluate emails and look for signs that statisically indicated they were spam, which worked for a while....
Even if you fix the technologic challenge, it still has to be implemented. Few forum owners are fluent in the programming language their forum runs, if they know any programming at all, so they tend to wait for that to be implemented by whomever wrote the forum software. It's all a matter of the time and effort needed to combat it and trying to keep that effort below the threshold where the host decides it's no longer worth their effort.
A bot might be able to answer that, but I'm pretty sure it'd keep out most of the new users. It certainly would have me.
That's a cool site Tom.Tom Jones wrote: ↑Sat May 28, 2022 11:31 pmIt's not that these posts aren't annoying. They certainly are. But requiring an answer to a rather esoteric question doesn't seem like a productive way to screen potential members for bots.
They're usually pretty obvious, and I don't find them annoying enough to do anything keep new folks away.
This may be a bit self-serving, but I have a website, https://www.exploremicroscopy.com, where many of the Microbehunter videos and forums are listed under "Web Resources", along with a lot of other material. The site is an addition to my outreach activities where some 67,000+ kids have had a chance to look through nice microscopes (BH-2s) at interesting specimens since 2010. My primary outreach venue went completely online in the summer of 2020 due to Covid-19. Last year it was a combo - partially online and partially in person. 22,000 kids were involved last year. This October it will be the same. If any of the K-12 kids, parents or teachers follow the links to these forums, I'd rather not have them scared off by a question most of them won't even understand and isn't even relevant to most of us.
I doubt Oliver wants to scare off potential new members either.
Tom
Have you seen what some of the AI is capable of today? Sometimes I legitimately wonder what % of online interactions are with real people.
