QJ has recently taken a very hard line on spam of any sort. Unfortunately, it seems there are companies that encourage/enable people to spam thousands of boards at one time for a tiny fee and a few minutes of their time whenever they feel like it.

The new version of this forum has been a great help in keeping spam out but I get tired of seeing the attempts knowing the reason. (Plus I expect, after a time, these companies would just find a new angle.)

I always banned areas of the world where the most crap was coming from. (And a few specific individuals, 3 as I recall, for various reasons but not in a long time.) I've been fairly successful with new "entrepreneurs" from odd places and lately I've been drilling down to people in known cities like Chicago and the Twins... Tonight I banned a few more from a few hundred miles farther away. Sooner or later some some honest BW/Q paddler will be banned by simple association.

Point is, if all you see is that image when you try to access these forums, one of your neighbors could very well be a gullible 'asshole' trying to make a few bucks using the same ISP. Follow the directions provided and I'll get you back in as soon as possible. You'd know if it were personal so don't take it that way if it ever happens through guilt by accidental association.

I've replaced the image above with what someone will currently see. Clicking "real person" will be the fastest way to regain access. I even assigned a little audible notice to those e-mails so reversing a ban could be pretty quick if I'm sitting here.

Again, my apologies to the two people I've banned by simple association since implementing this policy.

So far for the month of July, this approach has denied 7,290 'hits' to this forum. Basically ~3,500, idiots expecting QJ would pay for advertising sites no one in their right mind should visit. While those requests only accounted for 0.58% of total traffic to the overall site, they would have taken CPU time, bandwidth and disk space that would multiply over time. Plus, opportunists like that just annoy the crap out of me.

These days, I'm down to banning ~2 new addresses a day and have actually seen a decrease in failed attempts and an increase in real visitor sessions over that time. I don't expect to see a day with a ratio of 35 guests to 4 members per any given 10 minute period any time soon. Even the spam I instantly began receiving when, as a stop gap measure, a new member was required to reply to an e-mail to become a member has subsided to a manageable number. The last post to the moderators forum was "Re: Million dollar idea . . . . take 3". That was a month ago.

Agreed, KF.

I was just thinking to myself a couple days ago that it sure is nice when the cops don't have to leave the doughnut shop to deal with those annoying criminal complaints.   I'd much rather sit here, eat donuts, and shoot the breeze.

db, I truly did not appreciate the lack of spam until we had to deal with it.  Thanks for shutting off the faucet so effectively!! 

Nana who??

FWIW - The image above was replaced with a page that simply says " (You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)" to reduce bandwidth. The only two places you'll get that page is from this forum and the POD. Please consider POD access as an early warning system because both basically consult the same list of abusive IP addresses. If you can't see the POD you probably cannot post here either, or anywhere else on QJ for that matter.