Today I have added a new feature to the forum which will limit the features available to fresh user accounts on this forum. The reason I am doing this is because recently there have been a small group of people who make it their daily goal to create 1-3 duplicate accounts using proxy services and fake email addresses in order to spam the forum with 10-15 posts of pointless GIFs and "where is the download " comments in WIP topics. This is wasting the time of our staff and defacing the forum.

Unfortunately banning the IP addresses of these users is ineffective because they are changing their IPs with proxy services. I could ban all known proxy services from visiting the forum but there are legitimate users on the forum who use proxies for getting around school/work firewalls etc who would be affected by this ban. I could ban all of the known fake email generation sites from being used in registration but there are thousands of possible domains and I could not possibly ban all of them - this would be just as time consuming and ineffective as banning their accounts one at a time like we are right now.

As a result the only way to stop these people is to put limits on every single new account registered on the forum. This is a proactive solution to the problem instead of a reactive one, and should be more effective as a result. Obviously this is going to affect more legitimate users than it will spammers, so I was very careful in choosing what limitations I impose on new forum accounts.

New users on the forum can expect the following limitations to be placed on their account:

• You will not be able to make any topics or replies on the forum without a site moderator personally approving them first. When you try to make a topic or reply it will save your topic/reply for a moderator to approve or deny. Once it is approved it will appear on the site publicly - if it is ignored or denied it will never appear on the site. This prevents new accounts from spamming rule-breaking replies to all the recent topics on the site while still allowing legitimate replies to be posted on the forum.
  
• You will be limited to 5 topics or replies a day. This prevents spammers from spamming the approval system which would continue to annoy the staff members of the website.
  
• You will not be able to send Private Messages.
  
• You will not be able to modify any of your topics or replies - if you need to make an edit a moderator will have to assist you.
  
• Cannot access the UGX Chatroom (planned feature, won't be available right away).
  

All of the limitations listed above will be removed automatically once your account reaches 10 approved posts. This proves to the staff that you are a legitimate responsible user who deserves unrestricted access to all the features this forum has to offer. Of course a dedicated no-life spammer could waste his or her time making 10 legitimate posts over a 2 day period just to spam right after they get the ability to, but this will take much longer and require much more effort than it does for them right now which will hopefully discourage it from happening in the future. Even if they continue to spam this will at least slow down the rate at which they can do it.

I apologize to all new members who have no intention of spamming our forums, but until the issue of spamming is resolved this system will have to remain in place. You can thank the spammers for ruining the registration process for legitimate users.

If anyone has any suggestions or comments on this new forum feature please feel free to reply below.

Sounds good Trem! When will this new system be implemented?

Sounds good Trem! When will this new system be implemented?

Right now. Just finished adding all of the files to the live server and tested it with a test account.

This is a really good idea I hope this deteriorate spammers  and people with nothing constructive to say, ive noticed predominately that its new users that post stupid and pointless replies to topics.

Good Job Trem

great idea trem, glad we can get rid of the spamming ones now, hopefully for good

What if there's a user who was under the 20 post mark before this? Are they affected? Or is it just new users who register from now on?

What if there's a user who was under the 20 post mark before this? Are they affected? Or is it just new users who register from now on?

It affects everyone under 20 posts.

You will not be able to make any topics or replies on the forum without a site moderator personally approving them first.

I thought someone told us that chat moderators were also able to approve the new posts?
Nevertheless, I love this new system and I hope that the spamming will stop now.

Good Job Trem!!

Lukkie1998

Thank you for doing this, trolls got on my nerves

Im behind the 20 post limit wuhu xD
But yeah thx for doing this trem

Don't you think 20 posts is a little low. I mean if you put 30 posts it wouldn't do bad, would it??

Don't you think 20 posts is a little low. I mean if you put 30 posts it wouldn't do bad, would it??

It could have been higher, but people who only come to UGX for spamming won't even try to post 20 serious comments, just so they can spam some topics.

Lukkie1998

Great idea! I just pity the site moderators who have to approve new member comments all day long.

Great idea! I just pity the site moderators who have to approve new member comments all day long.

There has been talk about chat mods also having powers to approve, which is good

There has been talk about chat mods also having powers to approve, which is good

I looked into it and the only way for me to give chat mods permission to approve posts is by giving access to the moderation panel, which comes with other site moderation features that are intended only for site moderators - so I didn't do it. I could probably rewrite the default system a bit so that chat mods have permission to approve posts they see on the forum without using the moderation center but I think we have enough site mods to manage the job right now, plus its not worth me taking more time away from UGX Mod development at this time.