Welcome to SpiritWars / Rules

[Nat]

Welcome to SpiritWars! If you don't know what that is, please read the description on the main site.

Rules:

There's only one all-encompassing rule on these forums:

Keep things civil and use common sense - no trolling, flaming, etc. You're free to debate, disagree, joke around, and so forth, but do so respectfully. I'll remove anything and anyone who continually breaks this rule - there are plenty of sites for you to be a jackass, but this isn't one of them.

Enjoy!

[TwistedMe]

Amen!  SpiritWars is a great game... no doubt.... but the PEOPLE have always been the heart and soul!  Absolute BEST group of mature, respectful and experienced game players I've ever had the pleasure to know!  I'm so excited you're bringing it back!  Long time coming!  Hope to see all the OLD faces and a bunch of NEW ones! 

[Neo Pain]

I asked some friends (that run sites) about some of the bot problems that I have seen here and here are some replies I got from them.

to register for the forum is there some bot test? like a visual thing? is there an email check?

that'll keep out many bots but really some spammers are persistent so you have to ban some emails and ip ranges too. it's a constant battle really.

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It's difficult to prevent, because as Ontain said some are very persistent.  They will sometimes use a captcha solving service (think distributed captcha solving) or monitor it themselves while running these mass signup services. 

An easy win is to implement at least a basic captcha, that will catch many of the automated signups.  Another way is to use some of the more innovative/obscure ones out there that require you to draw or solve some sort of problem/quiz question.

Here's a list of some decent ones out there: http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/freebies/captcha-solutions-kill-spam/

If it's a game driven site, you may even consider some of the more silly/fun ones like http://www.securitystronghold.com/products/ironclad-captcha/?product_tab=example

One more option I forgot about, is put a hidden field into the form.  Humans won't see it and won't fill it out, but a bot will attempt to fill it out and submit the form.  You can then do a post check to see if the hidden field has a value, if it does then you can reject the submission.

[Vampira]

Hi Neo ... not asking for others but wanted to say hi.... i'm here.