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Reduced SJ membership by ~1/3

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Jeff, Dec 27, 2014.

  1. Vombatus

    Vombatus Well-Known Member

    Isn't there a term "Fenian bastard" around here? I never understood the origin of that.
     
  2. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Not a term but a poster.In fact one headed straight for the SJ HOF. If his body of work wasn't gased in the recent purge have
    look.
     
  3. Tarheel316

    Tarheel316 Well-Known Member

    I thought the Gaaaarden was in Boston. But then again I'm a Celtics fan.
     
  4. Jeff

    Jeff Administrator Staff Member

    FYI--I've managed to knock out a bunch more spam accounts.

    You'll notice we're down to 22K users (5K with bouncing emails, so they aren't listed in the public user count) versus when I bought the site there were 68K registered users. I've spent 50'ish hours on this looking for patterns of irregularity that identify spam accounts. For example, there were 34 accounts with a listed location of "37 twenty-fifth street Los Angeles"... all with that exact sentence case. Clearly a bot. Even after all this, I suspect there's another 2K-3K in there that are impossible to identify until they start spamming...

    I'll be enabling email digests to users at some point in the next few weeks, and when I do I expect a surge in spam as spammers who've been lying dormant to realize they have an active account here.

    If you see spam, hit the report button and we'll clean it up. I may make it so if a post gets reported at least 3 times it'll automatically be hidden until a mod handles it, not sure yet as that has potential to be abused.

    Again, I'm quite sure these are spammers, when in doubt I didn't delete the account. The deeper I dug, the more patterns I found to identify spammers... I also checked all the emails against the StopForumSpam.com database.

    I've also made it so new user registrations are automatically approved (previously they required manual approval), but a user's first couple of posts have to be approved by a moderator. The old forum software was fairly easy for bots to get through, so moderating new users' posts will hopefully catch the spammers who've already successfully registered but who haven't activated their accounts.

    Besides, the manual approval of new accounts isn't really an effective anti-spam measure. Xenforo has excellent bot traps in their registration form, so most of the spammers who successfully register new accounts will be humans. The success rate on spotting a human spammer based solely on their username and email address is very low.
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2015
  5. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    In general, 'fenian' as a term refers to those who support Irish nationalism and Irish independence. It's a reference to the Fenian Brotherhood of the 19th and early 20th century. That itself is a reference to an early meaning, when the term was used for groups of young men in early Irish history who were called upon by chieftains during war times.
     
    Jeff likes this.
  6. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    They were a terrorist group
     
  7. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    You could make an argument for that case.

    I'd say the fenians and the original IRA were not terrorists because they did not target civilians.
    I'd say the later IRA in the north was a terrorist group because it did target civilians, and the protestant orange lodges were also terrorist groups for the same reason.

    Just my take, but I'm probably biased.
     
    cranberry likes this.
  8. Gold

    Gold Active Member

    Let us not forget Wednesday of the Addams Family.
     
  9. Gold

    Gold Active Member

    One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. The Orange lodges established threats to the Catholic minority, and were Northern Ireland's version of the Ku Klux Klan. The British army was an occupying force to preserve their occupation of a part of Ireland. Ireland is one country artifically divided by the UK government. How many incidents of violence can you name in the last 40 years that the Republic of Ireland government did against Protestants.
     
  10. Gold

    Gold Active Member

    I think my account was one of the ones deleted because I had a work address. My old account was Gold, and a work e-mail was listed so perhaps that is why it bounced back. Anyway, I set up a new account and am single-handedly putting SJ.com on an upward track.
     
  11. Buck

    Buck Well-Known Member

    My family is Catholic and from Armagh and Tyrone. My grandparents immigrated here in 1920.
    I'm not pro-occupation or pro-colonialism. I'm saying I draw my line at targeting civilians, that is my line between terrorists and freedom fighters.
    Attacks on British soldiers and even colonial police could be categorized as freedom-fighting.
    Attacks on the families of colonial police and bombs in marketplaces should be categorized as terrorism.
     
  12. Jeff

    Jeff Administrator Staff Member

    Your account still exists on SJ--I just checked. The email address bounced, but you can still login and update the email address tied to the account. If you've forgotten the password, then I can reset your email if you can prove it's you and not someone trying to be you.

    Down the road, there will probably be benefits like user titles and other things tied to postcount, so unless you're creating a new account to be anonymous, it's probably better to keep using your old account. I'll PM you with more details.
     
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