LiveCode Journal Forum login (was Re: How to detect Android or iOS)

[Richard Gaskin]

Monte Goulding wrote:

>> Maybe more to the point:
>>
>> ???since when has LC Journal had a forum???
>>
>> It's not listed anywhere on the web site.
>
> Even more to the point why is my ip banned from it?

Because there is evil in the world.  ;)

When Ken and I were setting up that forum, I was getting dozens of new 
account requests every day - even before it had been linked to anywhere 
publicly.  The account names were obviously junk as well, and many if 
the IPs traced to the Ukraine, China, Russia and other known hotbeds of 
criminal online activity (I look forward to any of those countries 
proving me wrong by enforcing their own laws).

I've been through this mill as a moderator for the LiveCode forums, but 
here I have more privileges, so I exercised them brutally: I blocked 
entire IP ranges by geographic assignment.

Yep, like the many small software devs who get slammed with tens of 
thousands of downloads when a crack is posted on a Chinese blog, I 
looked up the IP address and the geographic assignment for it, and 
blocked some parts of the world from accessing the site at all.

It was the only way I could get back to real work, and it worked like a 
charm:  spambot attempts have dropped dramatically.

However -

The original geographic assignments for IP blocks have evolved over 
time, so that some addresses in ranges originally assigned to a given 
region have been returned to the pool and reassigned elsewhere.

And thus our good friend from Australia was blocked as though he were in 
the Ukraine.

While the LCJ forums were still being set up, the regional IP blocks 
were fine and did wonders for my productivity on client projects.

But now that Ken's provided links for it, obviously we need to refine 
those blocks.

So I'd like to ask you to do me a favor:

If you get a ban notice, please drop me an email at 
ambassador at fourthworld.com and note the IP address you're using.  I'll 
then remove that from the blocked range and you can try again.

Unfortunately this is the only productive way I can admin that site 
given the prevalence of spambots.  I'll also review the blocks and 
narrow them as time permits, but your help in identifying IP ranges that 
have been reassigned will make that job much simpler.

If it were a major forum in which we expected to draw a million users 
I'd simply hire someone to stay on top of the bots full time.  But as it 
is it's just a volunteer effort for a small number of specialized topics 
specific to the RevInterop project, a relatively tiny subset of things 
that aren't better suited for the more general audience at RunRev's 
LiveCode forums where all the major stuff happens.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but removing all those blocks en 
masse would result in a flood of new account requests that I simply 
don't have the time to address.

And when you create an account, please try to choose a meaningful name, 
something like "RichardG" or something else that sounds like a real 
person, as opposed to, say, "FreeViagra" or "UggBoots", so I can more 
easily distinguish your requests from the bots.

Note that disposable email address domains like "excite.com", 
"hotmail.com", "aol.com", and anything ending in ".ru" or ".ch", will 
remain blocked because such a block affects very few professionals but 
will stop a great many bots.

Draconian?  Absolutely.  As long as this is a highly specialized forum 
run as a volunteer effort, I need to remain very mindful of the time I 
devote to it, given that I'm also writing code libraries for the 
community and working on products for my clients and Fourth World.  The 
blocks I've put into place have transformed a serious millstone around 
my neck of colossal time wastage into something that can be useful 
without draining my time, so for the moment that's how it works.

If any of you want to volunteer for the time-consuming and 
mind-numbingly boring job of admining new account requests, I'll happily 
add you to the admin list and it's all yours.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv