'Eedjits'
Submitted by sayarsan on Fri, 29/08/2014 - 11:19
Forums:
In mho anyone with English language skills who can't manage to open an account is open to suspicion.
The site exists for members to contribute what they wish presuming their contribution has some intrinsic value. Contributors who fail to recognise and respect the commonly accepted standards for effective communication are also open to suspicion.
Those members who are incapable of producing something that is clearly coherent and of some value to others while using the site for entertainment on social media sites will be deleted.
I'm interested to read some other people's, no bots human or otherwise, thoughts on what would be acceptable guidelines for this issue.
I agree, but what to do
The only applications I have receibed this year to date have been from very obviously non-humans:
tieshahuhmanezoddibu8173@yahoo.com is the sort of username I see. They get sent an email asking them to write to me to prove their human - I have received no responses.Action to take:
1 - Pedro - will you test this? Try signing up under some alternate email address you have access to but is not registered to junkie.com.au..let's see if teh registration process has the ability to work
2 - I will take off the 'google lock' I have had on since Day One. This has prevented google from indexing teh site. Once i take it off, every blog and comment will start populating google's page ranking system, and showing up in searches. I guess I have to live with that, it's what the site is for. FOr example, a search for 'eedjits +sayarsan' should easily find your comment. Oh heck, I just tried that and it found your post! So maybe google is enabled...
3 - The eternal (and good) 'handbills at Biala and associated venues' idea. I know Qld Health won't allow them in the building, but billposting outside? We need to come up with some art.
A hard nut
At present I wonder just how easy it is to open an account. A friend of Pedro's claims he tried to open an account and it took him two attempts to get through CAPTCHA which might be a good thing but he was disappointed when the account application was not recognised immediately. Maybe he had to see a man about a dog but he should wait at least an hour or two before making a deal out of it.
I found it something of a surprise when I went to google and entered "sayarsan+shan" and found the top four entries were from this site, even before Wiki which came in at no. 5 and keeping the posts for a tourist attraction which bears his name close after a post from http://www.myanmars.net/myanmar-history/sayasan.htm which gives an account of his Quixotic exploits which led to the death of about 10,000 peasants. I must try using the '+' in my gogle searches more often.
As for Pedro's friend I suppose he can learn to be patient when dealing with people if he prefers the site the way it is instead of a tool for eedjits and the market place.
Accounts
Interestingly, I note the first 'real' pplication from a user came in yesterday. His username stood out from the usual hundreds of 'dolorescurmi45897835' type names applying for an account. SO I am going to forgo the usual step of 'asking for an email from user' to prove theuy're not a bot, and unleash thsi user immediately. Perhap's it's Pedro's friend.
If I automate all account applications, unfortunately we will have hundreds of spam comments pushing various cheap pharma and poisoned links to sites...the way bigger sites handle this is to introduce SMS to the equation, but I am not financially at that stage where I can pay for access to teh SMS gateway (unless anyone knows of an open source way to do SMS authentication?)
And yes, I have noticed Google returning hits on comments from teh site...I will need to look at exactly what google inspections i have allowed.
felix