You can change the order of the registration fields, or throw an extra step into the process to post or something along those lines, but the issue will continue to be a problme until the optical character recognition is implemented.

catsailor is clearly losing this war... the machines are taking over

Judgement day beckons!

Well, I guess I vote to do the upgrade. I fear loosing the ease of posting and the user friendliness of the site in doing so. This site is one of the easiest to use and navigate around and I would hate to loose that. I do not use catsailor.net because it is difficult to find what you want and I do not understand the way that it is layed out. I must say though that this round of attacks truly #%@*%.

I vote for the upgrade also.

How about temporarily denying enrolling any new members and locking out the obvious bot user names? At least until a fix is in place.

Simple solution is to have an active admin who just bans then within seconds. But the best solution is to upgrade.

YOu could go to moderator approval for all new members.

*Bump*

just do it

I run catsailor.org and I can tell you its no fun when these idiots take over your forum.

Just do it.

A forum, is a forum, is a forum. The graphics and some features will be a little different, all of the database content and layout will remain the same.

I apologize for this mess, but I hope it is now under control. Let's not panic.

Usually I am in charge of watching for this stuff and deleting and banning. But Rick and I were both gone Friday evening and all day Saturday. I was shocked when I saw the forum early Sunday morning.

Apparently, somebody has planted a spycam somewhere in the woods around our house to spy on Rick and me, so they know when we are not at home. Or else the bad guy is a sailor and is aware that most sailors are away from their computers sailing on the weekends. Most spam things like this seem to happen on the weekend.

Thank you Mary, that was scary!

Now what were we talking about? I couldn't hear you.<img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Thanks Mary!
J

Questions about upgrades and updates aside, this brings to mind again two important facts --

1. Nothing on the interweb can be depended on as being bullet-proof.
2. Those who are adept at riding herd are much appreciated.

Tip your waitresses.

We solved this... for the most part... in our forums by going to a manual activation of new users. Takes a bit more time and effort and some users who register on weekends wait a few days, but has kept the porn etc down.