Yoda
03-02-15, 02:05 PM
Hi MoFos.
Apologies for last night's spam attack. I saw, and deleted, the first wave fairly late, but at the time didn't think it would end up being so sustained. And unfortunately it all happened in that sliver of the night where pretty much all the mods are either going to sleep or not quite up yet. More unfortunate still, they came from wildly varying IP ranges, so the first couple of bannings didn't stop the ones that came after.
We're doing a few things in response to this. First, I'm expanding some of the mod tools so it's easier for them to wipe these out, because it was far too much of a burden on them in this case. A huge thanks to the mods (some of whom stayed up late to help fix things) for helping to staunch the deluge.
Second, human verification. I know Iro mentioned captchas in The Shoutbox, and we've used those in the past, but they can be broken. Awhile ago we switched to simple human verification questions ("what's the fourth letter in this site's name?") and we've had a lot of success with them, right up until last night. I've updated all three of the rotating human verification questions for now, and that might be fine. If not, I'll look into some of the newer methods available.
So, in summary: sorry! We've made a change to try to stop it, another to try to clean things up quicker, and if it happens again we'll go nuclear on the problem.
Thanks for bearing with us, and thanks for just moving everything into The Shoutbox. That was clever/amusing. :)
Apologies for last night's spam attack. I saw, and deleted, the first wave fairly late, but at the time didn't think it would end up being so sustained. And unfortunately it all happened in that sliver of the night where pretty much all the mods are either going to sleep or not quite up yet. More unfortunate still, they came from wildly varying IP ranges, so the first couple of bannings didn't stop the ones that came after.
We're doing a few things in response to this. First, I'm expanding some of the mod tools so it's easier for them to wipe these out, because it was far too much of a burden on them in this case. A huge thanks to the mods (some of whom stayed up late to help fix things) for helping to staunch the deluge.
Second, human verification. I know Iro mentioned captchas in The Shoutbox, and we've used those in the past, but they can be broken. Awhile ago we switched to simple human verification questions ("what's the fourth letter in this site's name?") and we've had a lot of success with them, right up until last night. I've updated all three of the rotating human verification questions for now, and that might be fine. If not, I'll look into some of the newer methods available.
So, in summary: sorry! We've made a change to try to stop it, another to try to clean things up quicker, and if it happens again we'll go nuclear on the problem.
Thanks for bearing with us, and thanks for just moving everything into The Shoutbox. That was clever/amusing. :)