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NEW USERS PLEASE READ!

Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 7:07 pm
by Andrew Lee
Latest anti-spam Q&A

Q: What comes after Julia, Jane, Jessie?
A: Jason

Q: What comes after 5, 7, 13, 57?
A: 138

Note: There is no "logic" to the answer (if you are looking for one). They are meant to trick human bots in low-cost countries who are tasked with solving registration puzzles. If the question is immediately solvable by a human on sight, it will be solved, and thus provide an entry point to the backend spambot script. However, it seems clicking an extra link on the registration page to look for answers to the challenge is enough to deter these human bot helpers. That's why we have settled on this method after much trial-and-error, and it has served us well so far.

Some tips to get you started

If you have just signed up and created a new post, your first post will not immediately show up in the forum. Instead it will have to be cleared by a moderator, which will normally occur within 24 hours, usually shorter. The reason why this is done is to combat spam. Although we purposely made the bot test in the signup form difficult, some human spammers still get through. As such, we screen new users' first posts to filter out those remaining ones. This strategy has served us well so far at a slight inconvenience to new users.

If the purpose of your signup is to post to the database, please read How to submit an application to the database directly. Anyone can add to the database after a 24 hour wait. However, you must have at least one approved post in the forums, not be flagged as a spammer and the entries you add will be private until they are upvoted by enough users to make them public.

Thank you for reading, and welcome to the TPFC community!