It feels like riding a bike with f***ing training wheels. I can already post on my own, I'm an adult, thank you very muchhh in advance for your cooperation.
:p
It feels like riding a bike with f***ing training wheels. I can already post on my own, I'm an adult, thank you very muchhh in advance for your cooperation.
:p
The short answer is no.
The pre-moderation isn't to teach you how to post, it's to combat spam. 99% of new registrants are here to spam these boards and drop links to their sites. Maybe more than 99%, in the last 24 hours we've probably had more than 100 new registrants. Most of them are not even people, they're bots.
Us not having new members' posts go public immediately on posting works as a major disincentive for spammers to play their games here.
I am just new and registered few mins ago, i can not even edit my profile yet. I do appreciate the idea of battling spam but would wish to get more information"s what is allowed as new member and when restriction might have dropped. So far i read that no links for the first few posts would be a great start :) so no link here :) I Got that.
It's not a question of links or not. Even if the restriction for the first posting is lifted, you are not allowed to write what you want. Moderators read all the postings within this Forum and users who doesn't comply with Forum rules may be warned or banned forever.
klausius, from running various forums I've realised there are two types of members.
The "good" members registering on this site register to ask questions about Knoppix, to answer questions about Knoppix, to take part in discussion.
The other type of member who registers is registering to drop links to their site in posts, to try to sell stuff, to create links to their own sites in their profile (for "SEO" reasons) and to play all kinds of other games. We are not interested in those members. Some of these people are hired by SEO companies to sign up at forums just to create profiles.
A member of the first type who registers and demonstrates he is of the first type - here for on-topic discussion - will find that he acquires the ability to modify his profile etc. In due course. For security reasons, and to frustrate the second type of member, we don't disclose exactly how many posts or how many days a member needs to wait to acquire those privileges ...or what other criteria we use.
I welcome you to these boards and I hope you turn out to be the first type.
<added>
If you help someone in a thread by making a link to a page on Klaus Knopper's site or to a Wikipedia page I can't see a mod banning you even if it's your first post. ;)
I just registered and this thread is my first reading. I shuddered at the stern advice to read the FAQ, due to wanting to avoid a college education class to ask why my new Knoppix CD don't work. But, I clicked this thread first. And it makes Huge Sense to me as the first reading of the site. I suggest it be offered, up-front, and maybe tittled...."The Doorman Speaks." Now, I must go read the FAG and look where I can ask why my new Knoppix CD gits, "LZMA" error trying to boot up on my AT machine.
Please have a look at Cheatcodes and test the integrity of your download with "md5sum" and of the burned CD with the cheatcodeIf you get no errors tell us more about your machine; for a modern Linux like Knoppix you need at least 500MB RAM - better is 1-2 GB.Code:knoppix testcd
First, I did not mean to imply that I did any download. I said...My new CD. This is because I bought the CD from SourceForge, to be delivered. And it boots on WinXP but my interest is a non-booting AT machine w/Win98, 756MB RAM. I am a Windows user who is looking for the Alternative. I bought the CD because of all the wild claims from the development team about fitting and working on older computers. But I see you personally incourage newer hardware. I think you call mine from the "Last Century". Oh-well.Quote:
Originally Posted by Werner P. Schulz
...... I did read the cheat codes and tried a few before signing up on this forum. Trouble was...too little info about each code and how to use them.
To continue.......where I can ask why my new Knoppix CD gits, "LZMA" error trying to boot up on my AT machine?
Thank you
What about this? I suppose, your CD is a mishmash CD, not an origin Knoppix CD. You may ask SourgeForge why you cannot use this CD.Quote:
I bought the CD from SourceForge, to be delivered. And it boots on WinXP ..
To work with Knoppix DVD, please download from the Mirrors and burn it yourself. Test the burned DVD with "knoppix testcd".
I moderated this site heavily in the days before new members posts were moderated before being approved. This change has been a huge help, not just for the moderators but for all users. I used to see all kinds of problem, including imbedded porn images and links to malware and other infections. The problems were so bad that I had software on my personal systems that would check the board for new posts every few minutes and alert me so that I could get this type of material removed quickly.
If new members are frustrated that they can't post and immediately get an answer to their question, just ask yourself if the problem that you are posting about is something that hasn't been asked and answered over and over again. Perhaps doing a simpler search for an answer or reading a FAQ would get you your answer quicker, and you might learn other useful things about Knoppix at the same time. I never thought about it before, but maybe the moderation delay for new members is also helping limit the number of posts of the type that say "I'm not going to put the effort into reading the instructions, just tell how to ...".
I would suggest that anyone not happy about the new member moderation delay get over it. You shouldn't expect a quick concise response in less time than it would take to read the instructions, and it may be good that the first posts are slowed by moderation. But the moderation is pretty fast on this site (I've been finding fewer and fewer posts to moderate myself as the other moderators get to most before I ever catch them, none again today) and there is very little legitimacy in complaints about it. And the alternative would be so much junk posted that the person that just might help you is discouraged from wading through it all to find your request.
Understand too that the people most likely to help you with any legitimate problem are not slowed down at all by this feature. The moderators are the active members that solve many (if not most) problems. And they can see your post immediately, even if the general public can't. And the moderation features forces it to their attention and forces it to be read, so it will not be ignored even if it has a title that a moderator would overlook because it looks like other posts he has seen, imparts no real information, or is simply about a subject that the moderator isn't interested in. The moderation delay may get you your answer faster and from someone less likely to give bad information.
As to links, I would like to see them disallowed completely. There is too much potential for abuse, including completely changing the target of the link after moderation. Whenever I see a link, even if it looks legitimate, it is a red flag to me to pay extra attention to the post, and track down just who this new member is, what other sites he posts on, check for spam history on his IP address as well as his email address, and so on. Complaining about not being able to post links makes the flag even redder.
aren't spam posts pretty obvious.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman
if a post is so badly written that you think it might be spam with a spam link, but you're not sure because it looks legit too, then why not check the link?
somebody complaining about not being able to post a link shouldn't in itself be a red flag. If they eloquently explain their
problem and it looks legit but they complain that they can't post a link, and a link would help them explain their problem, then it doesn't sound that suspicious.
have you ever had a spammer complain that he can't post a link.. and say you then say it's not clear why he needs the link, does he then respond with a very convincing explanation and a link to a very legit looking website? Mostly you just need to look at the link or hover over it, to see it is spam.
On a related note. 10+ years ago I knew spammers would eventually figure out that their spam would be more likely to be opened if they put 're...' in the subject. Unfortunately they started doing that, but it's still easy to see that it is spam.
From my experience I've never seen problems with links of the approved users.
On the other hand it's very easy to recognize spam post of new users; either I highlight the URL and see the spam link or I follow the link and look over the website. If it is a spam posting, it will be deleted and the user banned forever.
Some times spamer try to post something which looks like nonsense but without a link and they hope to get the "approved" status by the time. In this case I send them a warning pm and I didn't see them coming back with other trial postings.
A wise decision of the administrators has been, to limit the time for users to edit their postings. Therefore it is impossible to insert spam links within the posting many days or weeks later.
Perhaps Clinton or Harry may consider to extend the time limit to 24 or 48 hours. Sometimes users complain about the current short time limit. And I think none of the approved users will abuse such an extended time limit for spam.
do you mean this restriction on just new users, or on approved users too?Quote:
Originally Posted by Werner P. Schulz
and perhaps with new users, it's possible to be automatic in allowing(or sending for approval) edits that don't modify or add links.
It's only a thought of me to extend the time limit. Even if the administrators will do it, it would be their own decision, in which way they will do it.
But I think it isnt't necessary to differ between new or approved users. Either a spamer insert a spam link immediately or he starts in any thread with a nonsense posting like for example:
"Very interesting message. I agree with you."
well, if you think that that post should be allowed in as a first message, then ok, but then you could have a second layer of approval.
for example it's beyond doubt that you're not a spammer so there's no need for you to be under any extended time limit for editing your posts.
I suppose that it's beyond reasonable doubt that i'm not a spammer. And i'd rather not have a 1 day or any time limit re editing my posts.
Hi.. Long time registered, just hadn't posted. :) Some sites I've been on over the years will allow immediate posting but will strip all external links for a prescribed amount of time. Seems like it was a WEEK or even TWO before new users had full posting privileges on the sites I'm remembering.. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Werner P. Schulz
Most are. And there are many clues, including bad grammar (I'm not going to list all of the clues here, for reasons that should be clear.) But lots of members here don't have English as a first language, and even of those who do, many wasted their taxpayer funded education and are barely literate enough to post. So grammar isn't an adequate indication of spammers.Quote:
Originally Posted by terapin
But while most spammers are easy to spot, there are devious spammers out there. I've caught people come back and edit a perfectly acceptable post to include spam after the post was moderated. This happened on the old forum software and there are now checks in place to hopefully catch it.
I even had a case where someone was praising a boot-able Linux on Flash-drive release and suggesting it was so good that he sent the author extra money. I made an off-hand comment that this sounded like hype, and he responded so aggressively denying the implication that I looked into it further, even though I had not be inclined to at first when I saw the previous post. What I learned was that there were three members here all singing the praise and wonders of that flash-drive, including him. They posted back and forth discussing it. And they all posted from the same IP address (even though they claimed to be from different countries), an address that I was able to trace back to the seller of the Linux flash-drive software. I had seen those threads before, but they looked sincere enough to not raise suspicion. It was only after the spammer had pushed his luck and became rude about my questioning his legitimacy that I looked into it enough to find reason to remove his false and misleading spam posts.
We have learned a lot in fighting spam. We have tools that let us check a lot of things about a new member. Some of it is automated and comes into play automatically by the forum software, some still comes down to a human effort. Back in the days before Clinton took over the site, the previous owner EADZ wanted everyone to be able to post immediately without moderation. The problems were major. I wrote software to analyze the logs, and we could see that there were a hundred or more new spammer sign-ups for every legitimate user sign-up. Many accounts were never used, many were allowed to age for weeks or months before the spammer came back and started posting. We also had a lot of problems with real damage done to both the forums and the wiki by spammers; in some cases information was completely lost and Eadz couldn't recover it even from the backups.
The current system is a good system. Users who think that their extremely important posts are being delayed for a few minutes or even a hour or two might be better served by using that time to see if their question hasn't been asked and answered many times before. But in any case the people who are best qualified to see you post and help resolve it will see it as soon as they long in, simply because the moderation process requires them to see it.
You've got no idea!Quote:
Originally Posted by terapin
Thank you, Harry, that means a lot to me. I remember how much we discussed the spam problem and the should we/shouldn't we move to a new system and all the backups of "bad" email addresses and "bad" IPs we took and all the other stress we - mainly you - handled.Quote:
Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman
Everyone else, you'll just have to trust me on this, every single one of the current restrictions is there for a very good reason and has been put in place because we've figured out over the years many of the tricks spammers use. Most spammers are idiots and give themselves away easily. Others are a lot smarter, a lot more devious and sneak in promotion of their websites, or link drops, in very cunning ways - hidden text with links, white text, punctuation marks with links etc. are the EASY ones to spot!
I appreciate some restrictions imposed by what is, after all, an automated system can be frustrating but as the person who has first hand experience of the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of spam messages we've deleted, the thousands of suspect IPs we kept tracking, the thousands of hours Harry spent cleaning the site of spam, I'm very satisfied that we've got a good balance of minimum disruption to genuine users while keeping spam at bay so the site is clean for YOU to use (without having to trawl through a lot of junk to get at the information you need).
For every post you see in public there are more than a hundred (spam posts) that have been blocked by the system! Anyone who wants to volunteer to clean that spam manually is welcome to PM me with their proposal to lift any of the current restrictions.