Boss Hog

Just a quickie, I am slowly starting to realise why so many other forums have sooooo many members, seriously from what I have experienced running this forum 50% (probably more) are just spam accounts.

...as a result over the past 2 months I have only approved accounts with a UK based IP address, this means deleting loads of registrations from people in the United States, the rest of Europe and an awful lot from India etc.

I was just wondering what you all thought as some of these people from abroad may be looking for designers to do work, they too may be graphic/website designers that want to get involved in the forum.

There is no other way to police this so we either allow everybody in...opening the forum up to spam posts, discussion on topics which may not be relevant to the UK and possibly dirt cheap quotes, or, carry on as we are ensuring the community is truly UK based. (not something currently available anywhere else)

Personally I would rather the forum grow slowly with quality members based in the UK than allowing anybody in but this is your forum too, so what do you think?

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JMCDesigner

To be perfectly honest I've been on a few other forums and I see general different attitudes. Some are very spammy, some are very unfriendly, some are ok, some aren't very well moderated. But this is one of the better ones I visit, everyone is generally friendly, helpful and professional. Whether that's to do with UK only, I'd like to think so! I personally hate spammery in forums and I have seen it here the least out of all forums I visit. Keep it unique, UK only

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Boss Hog

Any other views?

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CYoung

I agree with JMC. Keep it UK.

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JohnRoss

As you know, I'm not located in the UK, at least not permanently, and I think UK only is a mistake. It's so old-fashioned to to classify people by geographical location, especially based on IP address. Would you exclude a Cockney from a forum about London just because he happened to have found a job in Wales? Not to mention telecommuting - these days, there must be any number of UK designers working out of the north of France, Ibiza, or wherever. Plus, you are barring students at universities outside the UK, those gaining work experience abroad, gap-yearers, British designers working abroad, British academics teaching abroad, and so on, apart from non-UK visitors attracted simply because you have a forum which works dedicated to graphic design (as you point out yourself, you are excluding a lot of Indian/Asian design talent - can't be a good thing). I feel you are missing the chance to establish this forum as a point of reference in the field.

Neither do I think the forum's success, seriousness, good behaviour level, lack of spam etc., can be attributed to it being restricted to the UK. Rather, I feel forum members find a high level of professionalism here, and behave accordingly - it's peer pressure that is keeping standards up.

I do know, though, that it is hard work running a successful forum, and that spam accounts are a damned nuisance. So I have a couple of suggestions:

- Boss Hog, you work too much. Delegate. Some of the forum vets must spend hours a week here anyway, I'm sure one or two would be delighted to act as moderators (and if not, to hell with the whole thing).
- CAPTCHA.
- Spam accounts can be pretty well eliminated by a 'minimum contribution' quota (there may well be a routine built into the vbulletin software for doing this, if there isn't, I expect someone would be able to hack it for you). Essentially, for an account to remain active, that member would have to have posted x messages per y length-of-time, 1 message a month, for example. Inactive or less active accounts woud be deleted. Most forum members would be understanding about the need for this, though a few would protest. The protesters could be told that, if they have nothing else to post about, they can always post a portfolio critique or something equally undemanding. So as well as largely eliminating spam accounts, this would encourage participation.

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Boss Hog

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

JohnRoss, I understand exactly what you are saying, however....

Since yesterday I have had the following registrations:

Islamabad 13
China 10
India 14
UK 3

From my experience running the forums so far I can probably guarantee you that bar the UK registrations all the others are spammers, or, designers that are prepared to work for next to nothing.

Obviously my aim as well as creating a friendly community for you all to discuss design related issues is to promote UK designers, if the users above are going to spam the forum or offer design work for peanuts then this is going to cause problems.

CAPTCHA doesn't work as most of these users are real people sat at a PC somewhere getting paid to spam forums. For the past 2 months since doing this I have not had 1 spam post to deal with and I can only put this down to what I have done with regards to the IP's.

With regards to UK designers based around the globe, I agree totally that they should be able to join the forums but how do I do implement this? Obviously if they have a foreign IP but register with a UK e-mail/domain then they are approved without question, but, if they are signing up with a gmail account and an IP based in the US what can I do?

There are already many design forums that are open to the rest of the world and to be honest I did not enjoy frequenting them, silly quotes for design work, poor english, discussion on issues that were to do with other countries that were of no interest to me, spam!.....I thought our USP could be that this is a UK only forum, something different from what is already out there.

As mentioned above, this is your forum so whatever the members choose I am happy to go with, so let's see how the poll turns out in a couple of months.

Many thanks

Damon

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