Since there has been a new influx of spammers whose only goal it is to make an account with spam profile, we have decided to remove all accounts that were just made to sport an URL of some kind or a profile, without the user posting on the forums.

We will be doing this on a regular basis from now on. If that means that some of you, who just made an account here for future use, have lost their account as well, then we're sorry. It couldn't be helped. But as the spammers show us, a new account with the same name is easily made.

For the project administrators who think this is a splendid idea, and who would want to do the same thing, David put the script into Git. It is available for download. Our other new feature of administrators being able to completely delete spammer's posts from their forums, is also available for download.

---

Since there has been a new influx of spammers whose only goal it is to make an account with spam profile, we have decided to remove all accounts that were just made to sport an URL of some kind or a profile, without the user posting on the forums.

Spam on boinc projects forums is a plague.
Why not introduce, for example, CAPTCHA by default in boinc server code?
Admins install new server (or update it), et voilà, no spam on forum.

Spam on boinc projects forums is a plague.
Why not introduce, for example, CAPTCHA by default in boinc server code?
Admins install new server (or update it), et voilà, no spam on forum.

reCaptcha code is already used by default on making profiles, while Akismet will check whether or not the contents of the profile are spam.

For creating accounts, one also needs to solve a reCaptcha, meaning that a spammer can't use a script to quickly make multiple accounts. See https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/create_account_form.php

Using reCaptcha code on the forums is a bit undoable, as that'll mean that for every post someone makes he must solve a reCaptcha. That gets irritating soon, meaning that before long you may not have spammers, but you won't have a community of forum users either.

On most project forums, one needs to have a RAC larger than 1 (one) to be able to post, to show you're an active combatant competitor/computant. But for on the Help Desk forums, where people should always be able to post, in case they can't get things to work (thus no credit, thus no RAC). Not sure if this is a hack projects put in place themselves, or that it can be enabled in the present forum code.

If spammers want to spam, they'll find a way.

---

reCaptcha code is already used by default on making profiles, while Akismet will check whether or not the contents of the profile are spam.
See https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/create_account_form.php

Some boinc admins don't use it:
http://volunteer.cs.und.edu/csg/create_account_form.php?next_url=
http://gerasim.boinc.ru/secure/CreateAccount.aspx
etc
Can you force the use of reCaptcha??

Using reCaptcha code on the forums is a bit undoable, as that'll mean that for every post someone makes he must solve a reCaptcha.

Yes. The forum with reCaptcha for every post is a nightmare.

If spammers want to spam, they'll find a way.

:-(

Can you force the use of reCaptcha??

No, as with every other bit of the BOINC back-end and client software, as it's open source users of it can make changes to it and add/retract parts, or just disable non-essential parts as they believe fit.

But when they do, they should try to find some other way to fight the spammers. Or not complain when they're engulfed by them. (Jord's personal belief. ;-))

---

But when they do, they should try to find some other way to fight the spammers. Or not complain when they're engulfed by them. (Jord's personal belief. ;-))

I saw that, often, spammers are more annoying to the volunteers (who frequent forums) that for administrators :-(

What is BOINC?

https://boinc.berkeley.edu/
Use the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, Linux, or Android) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It's safe, secure, and easy.

---

Seems there is a bug in the code when deleting
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=10244&postid=75869#75869

---

Can you force the use of reCaptcha??

No, as with every other bit of the BOINC back-end and client software, as it's open source users of it can make changes to it and add/retract parts, or just disable non-essential parts as they believe fit.

But when they do, they should try to find some other way to fight the spammers. Or not complain when they're engulfed by them. (Jord's personal belief. ;-))

Why does reCAPTCHA NOT work on some projects? ... such as Atlas@Home (and others) .. it's just spins endlessly when I attempt to create an account.

http://atlasathome.cern.ch//create_account_form.php?next_url=home.php

The annoying part is that you can't post this problem on their message board .. since you don't have an account.

// Brian

BOINC projects aren't the only sites where reCaptcha doesn't work. At least one major European airline uses it on one part of its site, and it fails to work, but for the same airline, but a different part of their site is work correctly, which is very annoying because the first part is the easier part to get to....