forum - Due to abuse, this address block is no longer permitted.

[vtol]

there is certainly a good reason for banning some folks from the forums, however it is getting increasingly difficult to reach the forums at all if this banning of whole ip blocks contiues this way.

understanding that postings by certain subjects are not desired, which I trust can be blocked by their user names/email addresses, but I am having difficulties to grasp how the forums are being abused by being read?

from my perspective it does not make sense to keep on adding entire ip ranges and thus marking everybody on that range somewhat bad or abusive.

would appreciate to have this policy reviewed and if fit adjusted more granular.

[paintball9]

It's not reading that's the problem. There's spam bots signing up from an address inside that range, which then go post. With the amount of users coming in every day, it's not efficient to have someone manually check the authenticity of the users. (not to mention some of them look pretty legit until they start posting).

Now I'm not behind their decision, but I've run into this problem myself on sites I manage. That's really the only efficient way to prevent excessive spam.

[Ultima]

You underestimate the amount of effort it takes to prevent spammers from overrunning the forum. Banning entire IP ranges isn't a "policy". It just so happens that if we ban entire ranges, then it's because we've probably had to ban at least 20 bots from that IP range before we set the range ban. Going around banning bot after bot isn't all that interesting.

[DreadWingKnight]

understanding that postings by certain subjects are not desired, which I trust can be blocked by their user names/email addresses, but I am having difficulties to grasp how the forums are being abused by being read?

Because you can't see the dozens to hundreds of spam messages from some blocks, and you probably didn't look for the abusive posters potentially from the IP range you used to connect.

[vtol]

that is all about posting. I cannot even read the forums when on a banned ip range, there is not bot/spam/abuse in reading the forums

moreover I am not certain that all the ip block ranges are well validated/justified, e.g. VPN providers like relakks.com

probably you will not change for now, just come the day where you will have more blocked ip ranges than users still being able to get to forums

Edit (Ultima): Double post clash

[Ultima]

Yeah, bans tend to be a cat-and-mouse game. We're not interested in letting the forum signal-to-noise ratio decrease. In light of that, what would your proposed solution be?

[paintball9]

Are you able to implement http://akismet.com/ filtering into this forum template? I believe the cost is quite reasonable. (50 per month for enterprise which I'm guessing this would fall under)

[vtol]

Yeah, bans tend to be a cat-and-mouse game. We're not interested in letting the forum signal-to-noise ratio decrease. In light of that, what would your proposed solution be?

for that I would have to know something about forum protection. I just would imagine that this forum isn't exposed to such stuff more than others, I could be wrong here of course. But let us take wilderssecurity e.g., there are probably more forums/members/posts and yet they do not block entire ip ranges, least haven't heard of that or experienced it for that matter.

wonder then how they or others are coping/managing, trusting that they like to keep manpower for such matters low as much as you do

[paintball9]

I have a hard time believing that they don't do range banning. I'm just guessing you haven't run into it.

[vtol]

why would UT ban the entire relakks.com ip range, haven't come across any other forum blocking it?

reckon that temporary blocking of ip ranges does make sense the moment the attacks/spam is happening, but I have a hard time to believe that the bots are so static that they would not change their IP frequently, else it would be way too easy to get rid of them.

yet it seems that UT blocks an IP range and maintains that ban long after the bots are gone - as said that is how it seems. if true blocked ip would just keep on piling up, at some point hurting more users

and then again, reading the forums does not do harm, yet it is impossible from a banned ip range

[DreadWingKnight]

It only takes one idiot to ruin things for everyone, and one of your counterparts on relakks was such an idiot.

[vtol]

It only takes one idiot to ruin things for everyone, and one of your counterparts on relakks was such an idiot.

curious to know, care to elaborate?

[DreadWingKnight]

An abusive poster was abusing the constant-changing IP property of the vpn service to ban-evade.

Because of him, I don't plan to remove the ban.

[paintball9]

Are you able to implement http://akismet.com/ filtering into this forum template? I believe the cost is quite reasonable. (50 per month for enterprise which I'm guessing this would fall under)

What about this?

[vtol]

An abusive poster was abusing the constant-changing IP property of the vpn service to ban-evade.

Because of him, I don't plan to remove the ban.

thanks for the insight, appreciated. yet not so much that you punish an entire group because of one black sheep. that is telling everybody else you are bad. it is basically as if a retailer would ban the customer because of one shoplifter. do not reckon that will work on the long run.

and there must be a vast number of similar scenarios, considering that there is one or another abusive/malicious on every ip block out there.

that one guy was so determined that blocking the relakks ip range just stopped him/her? then it cannot be serious, else that person would find easily a way to evade that block, like I do now, except that I do not have bad intentions.

[Firon]

akismet is worthless.