16 minutes ago, Lord Antares said:

Was it like that on the old forum? Because that's where I noticed it.

Yes, this behavior shouldn't have changed much between versions.

It is, however, good to see members doing their best to offer help.

 

One thought about bots.

Presumably they don't look at the adverts that fund SF.

(I don't much either so perhaps that les me out)

I don't know what use could be made of that information in identifying them.

 

How do the bots manage to click on the save button, by the way.

I  seem to have lost another post his afternoon through fumbling this.

Would it be possible to change the rules slightly so that new members cannot start a thread until they have contributed to a number of existing ones. That ought to stop bots completely and discourage human spammers to a great extent.

28 minutes ago, Manticore said:

Would it be possible to change the rules slightly so that new members cannot start a thread until they have contributed to a number of existing ones. That ought to stop bots completely and discourage human spammers to a great extent.

I would be against this. I would guess that most people join the forum to ask a question in their thread. That's why I registered. If I wasn't able to do that, I certainly would have found another place to be a part of. 

Plus, most new members are not very knowledgeable in science, so by needing to contribute to other threads, they would literally be encouraged to post unfounded and potentially bad posts. I think new members need to be able to ask questions immediately.

 

15 minutes ago, Lord Antares said:

I would be against this. I would guess that most people join the forum to ask a question in their thread. That's why I registered. If I wasn't able to do that, I certainly would have found another place to be a part of. 

Plus, most new members are not very knowledgeable in science, so by needing to contribute to other threads, they would literally be encouraged to post unfounded and potentially bad posts. I think new members need to be able to ask questions immediately.

Makes sense.

On 8/9/2017 at 8:45 AM, Cap'n Refsmmat said:

If someone could write us a plugin to send 5000 volts to spammers over the Internet, that'd be great.

A simple plugin that would test for "https://" in side of any new posts for members with less then 10 posts?