Hilarious bots posting nonsense: what's the point?

[Eric Cartman]

Why not just force new members fill captchas before they can post?

They need to fill captchas when they register, if they can bypass it, then they will bypass the post captchas too, plus will be an annoyance to the legit newbies

[Lauda]

Captchas wouldn't be a solution simply because anyone with basic technical prowess with bots will be able to set up a captcha solving service for a low cost. Let's say that you have to use a captcha to create an account, it would cost them about $0.5 to solve 1,000 captchas and make 1,000 accounts. Not to mention this would only slow them down by a second or two.

I disagree with this. I've seen a captcha on a website that I wanted to register on in the past and it took me between 5-10 times to get it right. A bot would probably almost never get that one right unless they have reached a stage where they are better than a human (doubt it). Even if he was paying people to solve them, it would still slow them down.

Bloody is a common term in the UK too.

Ah, you have a better accent anyways.

[mexxer-2]

I disagree with this. I've seen a captcha on a website that I wanted to register on in the past and it took me between 5-10 times to get it right. A bot would probably almost never get that one right unless they have reached a stage where they are better than a human (doubt it). Even if he was paying people to solve them, it would still slow them down.

You still in the past eh? Humans are the ones that solve the captchas, bots can figure out much too but Humans always beat human made things.
Edit: BTW isn't there a simple solution to the new wave of spam? Just blacklist(ban the account who posted) the link(litecointalk link)

[onlinepro]

Why not just force new members fill captchas before they can post?

They need to fill captchas when they register, if they can bypass it, then they will bypass the post captchas too, plus will be an annoyance to the legit newbies

It is easy to manually make the accounts and then put the bots to post.
Having captchas for posting would block that.
It is true it would be annoyance for legit newbies, but spam bots posting is annoyance for all legit users, not just newbies.

[hedgy73]

It is easy to manually make the accounts and then put the bots to post.
Having captchas for posting would block that.
It is true it would be annoyance for legit newbies, but spam bots posting is annoyance for all legit users, not just newbies.

Very true and lets be honest, 99.9% of new accounts are either scammers, spammers, trolls, alts or account farmers. Or in other words of absolutely no value to this forum whatsoever. The forum would be a cleaner better place without them.

Yes it would be a slight inconvenience for the rare genuine new account but they pale into insignificance when compared to the number of crap accounts being created every day.

[orryde]

I think the spammer is trying to farm Bitcointalk accounts through spam, so that he can make a profit when those accounts reach higher ranks.

The mods should make account farming against the rules, as it is the biggest cause of spam on this forum.

[shorena]

It is easy to manually make the accounts and then put the bots to post.
Having captchas for posting would block that.
It is true it would be annoyance for legit newbies, but spam bots posting is annoyance for all legit users, not just newbies.

Very true and lets be honest, 99.9% of new accounts are either scammers, spammers, trolls, alts or account farmers. Or in other words of absolutely no value to this forum whatsoever. The forum would be a cleaner better place without them.

Yes it would be a slight inconvenience for the rare genuine new account but they pale into insignificance when compared to the number of crap accounts being created every day.

I see many new accounts with legit question or who are looking for support. Some are already annoyed by the post limit. Pestering them further with a captcha on top of that might drive them away. Id like to think that you get pretty good support here.

[hilariousandco]

I think the spammer is trying to farm Bitcointalk accounts through spam, so that he can make a profit when those accounts reach higher ranks.

You really don't know what you're talking about. What good would he be at farming accounts when they get nuked after one post? If he wanted to farm them he would copy others posts and try blend in to avoid detection but this is the opposite. He's being blatant because he's doing nothing but trolling by being a nuisance. I don't think the accounts are even set up to make more than one post either.

[Graphics]

Well the bot just moved on from Bitcoin Discussion to Mining. Now it's posting around 8 lines of speech/text every time, instead of 3-4 lines previously. Also within every post there is a link to a thread in litecointalk, as Hedgy mentioned.

Is he doing this so there's no consistency to the bot, so that each post has to be deleted manually instead of a possibility for an autoban?

[mexxer-2]

Well the bot just moved on from Bitcoin Discussion to Mining. Now it's posting around 8 lines of speech/text every time, instead of 3-4 lines previously. Also within every post there is a link to a thread in litecointalk, as Hedgy mentioned.

Is he doing this so there's no consistency to the bot, so that each post has to be deleted manually instead of a possibility for an autoban?

AFA IK/Understand its being handled by a bot now, saw some , too true to have been done by moderator, nukes yesterday. Most likely this is in effect:

Edit: BTW isn't there a simple solution to the new wave of spam? Just blacklist(ban the account who posted) the link(litecointalk link)

Can the staff confirm?

[hedgy73]

It is easy to manually make the accounts and then put the bots to post.
Having captchas for posting would block that.
It is true it would be annoyance for legit newbies, but spam bots posting is annoyance for all legit users, not just newbies.

Very true and lets be honest, 99.9% of new accounts are either scammers, spammers, trolls, alts or account farmers. Or in other words of absolutely no value to this forum whatsoever. The forum would be a cleaner better place without them.

Yes it would be a slight inconvenience for the rare genuine new account but they pale into insignificance when compared to the number of crap accounts being created every day.

I see many new accounts with legit question or who are looking for support. Some are already annoyed by the post limit. Pestering them further with a captcha on top of that might drive them away. Id like to think that you get pretty good support here.

I understand genuine new accounts would be annoyed by a captcha and / or post restrictions, but hey, tough shit, they'll get over it and understand if they're genuine. And whats more they'll understand if its cleaning up the forum. As already mentioned most new accounts are not real / genuine people. And how many posts does a brand new account have to make? If you're here to learn you read, read and read some more. Then if you feel confident enough you ask a question. In my experience that was hours or even days after joining a new forum. Most of these new accounts are posting within minutes with junk or basic questions that have already been answered a million times before, this is not the normal behavior of someone that's just joined a forum. It's of someone that's done it before and has ulterior motives.

I have signed up to many forums in the last 20 / 25 years with my other interests including football, cars, work related etc. and sometimes had to wait hours for my first posts to be approved and on some for the first replies to approved as well. This didn't bother me in the slightest because I was genuine and wanted to learn something. I also understood it eliminated the crap 100%.

Lets not forget this is by far the biggest bitcoin forum and the one everyone wants to join. Making it difficult for the trash will clean up the forum and give the genuine users a better experience. Also, being bitcoin related it attracts all the scum in cyber world like flies round shit.

I say lets get tough on new account sign ups because all the crap is driving genuine people away.

[okae]

It is easy to manually make the accounts and then put the bots to post.
Having captchas for posting would block that.
It is true it would be annoyance for legit newbies, but spam bots posting is annoyance for all legit users, not just newbies.

Very true and lets be honest, 99.9% of new accounts are either scammers, spammers, trolls, alts or account farmers. Or in other words of absolutely no value to this forum whatsoever. The forum would be a cleaner better place without them.

Yes it would be a slight inconvenience for the rare genuine new account but they pale into insignificance when compared to the number of crap accounts being created every day.

I see many new accounts with legit question or who are looking for support. Some are already annoyed by the post limit. Pestering them further with a captcha on top of that might drive them away. Id like to think that you get pretty good support here.

Sometimes people tend to forget that side, i mean that things should be friendly for legit users too and this is an important side, thats why stop all those spam bots are so difficult because is hard to find the balance between friendly for users and hard for bots.

So i agree 100% with you @shorena

[shorena]

-snip-
I see many new accounts with legit question or who are looking for support. Some are already annoyed by the post limit. Pestering them further with a captcha on top of that might drive them away. Id like to think that you get pretty good support here.

I understand genuine new accounts would be annoyed by a captcha and / or post restrictions, but hey, tough shit, they'll get over it and understand if they're genuine. And whats more they'll understand if its cleaning up the forum. As already mentioned most new accounts are not real / genuine people. And how many posts does a brand new account have to make? If you're here to learn you read, read and read some more. Then if you feel confident enough you ask a question. In my experience that was hours or even days after joining a new forum. Most of these new accounts are posting within minutes with junk or basic questions that have already been answered a million times before, this is not the normal behavior of someone that's just joined a forum. It's of someone that's done it before and has ulterior motives.

I have signed up to many forums in the last 20 / 25 years with my other interests including football, cars, work related etc. and sometimes had to wait hours for my first posts to be approved and on some for the first replies to approved as well. This didn't bother me in the slightest because I was genuine and wanted to learn something. I also understood it eliminated the crap 100%.

Lets not forget this is by far the biggest bitcoin forum and the one everyone wants to join. Making it difficult for the trash will clean up the forum and give the genuine users a better experience. Also, being bitcoin related it attracts all the scum in cyber world like flies round shit.

I say lets get tough on new account sign ups because all the crap is driving genuine people away.

Im not sure you are correct with your assessment of new users, on the other hand you, me and many of our "account age" suffered through newbie jail. Maybe my tolerance for shit is higher, but I rarely have the "this is so bad I dont want to be part of the human race anymore" feeling here. If I do, its mostly because higher ranked accounts that obviously post for their signature and have no idea what they are writing about. I dont think its bad enough to warrant more restrictions.

Maybe there will be new features on the improved forum.

[hedgy73]

If people want to be a member on here then they wont mind solving a captcha or waiting for a post to be approved. Those 2 things alone would cut out so much of the garbage.

Until that is done members have to keep reporting posts and moderators / admins have to check the report and delete the post and possibly the user. So in turn many people have to be involved and have their time wasted when the process could be pretty much automated by eliminating it from the start.

Still, never mind it doesn't matter what I or anyone else thinks its the powers that be that have the final say and if the new forum with its improvements ever gets made then we'll see. There's been talk of a new forum for ages now, I'm starting to wonder if it will ever happen.

[Lauda]

If people want to be a member on here then they wont mind solving a captcha or waiting for a post to be approved. Those 2 things alone would cut out so much of the garbage.

Until that is done members have to keep reporting posts and moderators / admins have to check the report and delete the post and possibly the user. So in turn many people have to be involved and have their time wasted when the process could be pretty much automated by eliminating it from the start.

Still, never mind it doesn't matter what I or anyone else thinks its the powers that be that have the final say and if the new forum with its improvements ever gets made then we'll see. There's been talk of a new forum for ages now, I'm starting to wonder if it will ever happen.

I understand your point of view and have read the previous few posts that others have made. It's about looking at the pros and cons of various proposals. IMO captcha and first post approval should be okay (one or a combination of both) because your post would probably be approved pretty quickly because there are a lot of patrollers. However, this doesn't really reduce the workload because instead of so many reports we would be handling the same amount (or more since we have to approve every brand new user) of work.
I don't see a problem with captcha for the first post. It is better than doing nothing.

[sho_road_warrior]

Looks like the bot switched to extortion mode, posting a btc address and "want it to stop". Should make it easy to set up a filter for it and ban automated.

[mexxer-2]

Looks like the bot switched to extortion mode, posting a btc address and "want it to stop". Should make it easy to set up a filter for it and ban automated.

Will work for a day or so I'd say, then he'd revert to the random spam.

[Lauda]

Will work for a day or so I'd say, then he'd revert to the random spam.

Yeah that's a useless suggestion by the user (not trying to be offensive). Patterns only work for a certain amount of time. Luckily there are enough of us to nuke him manually constantly.

[mexxer-2]

Looks like the bot switched to extortion mode, posting a btc address and "want it to stop". Should make it easy to set up a filter for it and ban automated.

Will work for a day or so I'd say, then he'd revert to the random spam.

Aand he's back to the random spam. Anyway I guess we got the answer as to why the botmaker is doing this, extortion(well kinda)

Yeah that's a useless suggestion by the user (not trying to be offensive).

Pssst, thats shorena

[shorena]

Looks like the bot switched to extortion mode, posting a btc address and "want it to stop". Should make it easy to set up a filter for it and ban automated.

Will work for a day or so I'd say, then he'd revert to the random spam.

Aand he's back to the random spam. Anyway I guess we got the answer as to why the botmaker is doing this, extortion(well kinda)

Yeah that's a useless suggestion by the user (not trying to be offensive).

Pssst, thats shorena

I just brought it up because I think Mitchells bot works like that. I also noticed that posts with a clear pattern are faster removed, which led me to believe that Mitchell is still feeding the bot with new strings to match.