Sign Up Verification?

Post Reply
User avatar
pumptato-cat
Exalted Member
Exalted Member
Posts: 340
Joined: June 15th, 2022, 11:04 am
Division: C
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Has thanked: 103 times
Been thanked: 77 times
Contact:

Sign Up Verification?

Post by pumptato-cat »

Mods, would you consider incorporating something similar to reCaptcha questions during registration for forums? This is to prevent bots from registering. Most are harmless but I've noticed some are not appropriate(well not pg-13 if you know what I mean) and there are people on this site that are in 6th and 7th grade. For example Quizbowl's forums has something like, "type the sponsor of this site backwards".
anything'll fly if you throw it hard enough
D39IJ11
Member
Member
Posts: 35
Joined: June 21st, 2022, 1:43 pm
Division: B
State: CA
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Has thanked: 11 times
Been thanked: 4 times
Contact:

Re: Sign Up Verification?

Post by D39IJ11 »

I agree with you. However, it appears that some of the bots are necessary to edit the wiki, and are developed by Scioly. You can see Google Bot, Pi Bot, Bing Bot, etc. when you go to the active users section on the forums page.
Design 39 Campus student
7th grader
Space science is the best!
D39IJ11's Userpage
User avatar
LittleMissNyan
Exalted Member
Exalted Member
Posts: 105
Joined: October 24th, 2018, 1:28 pm
Pronouns: She/Her/Hers
Has thanked: 738 times
Been thanked: 107 times

Re: Sign Up Verification?

Post by LittleMissNyan »

D39IJ11 wrote: April 2nd, 2023, 10:07 pm I agree with you. However, it appears that some of the bots are necessary to edit the wiki, and are developed by Scioly. You can see Google Bot, Pi Bot, Bing Bot, etc. when you go to the active users section on the forums page.
iirc the bots for Google, Bing, etc are webcrawlers that update Scioly.org's listings on their respective search engines! Scioly.org recognizes them as allowed bots and treats them appropriately. Pi-bot is a custom bot developed by pepperonipi for Scioly.org purposes (mostly wiki edits and Discord moderation at the moment, though it used to post in the forums too), and the site recognizes that as well. All these bots need approval however, while the spambots are making user-type accounts so they can open spam topics/wiki pages right away.
pumptato-cat wrote: January 28th, 2023, 8:28 pm For example Quizbowl's forums has something like, "type the sponsor of this site backwards".
I know when I first signed up there was a question like that, but now there's some sort of background reCAPTCHA plugin on the Register page. Now the question is how do the bots know how to get past that? 🤔🤔
Sassies 146 and 160 🥖 🔪
Eagle Scout
bUiLdEr cULt
User avatar
Piplup7575
Member
Member
Posts: 3
Joined: May 26th, 2022, 1:05 pm
Division: B
State: MD
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Has thanked: 51 times
Been thanked: 4 times
Contact:

Re: Sign Up Verification?

Post by Piplup7575 »

LittleMissNyan wrote: April 4th, 2023, 8:39 am I know when I first signed up there was a question like that, but now there's some sort of background reCAPTCHA plugin on the Register page. Now the question is how do the bots know how to get past that? 🤔🤔
Or maybe they aren't full bots - what if some registered for the account, then started botting it?
Or they're just trolling

There's a Tom Scott video about this somewhere

But hey- at least they can't make their first few posts on the forums without moderator approval
im a penguin from the arctic
assassinator 162
User avatar
bernard
Administrator
Administrator
Posts: 2498
Joined: January 5th, 2014, 3:12 pm
Division: Grad
State: WA
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Has thanked: 185 times
Been thanked: 789 times
Contact:

Re: Sign Up Verification?

Post by bernard »

pumptato-cat wrote: January 28th, 2023, 8:28 pm Mods, would you consider incorporating something similar to reCaptcha questions during registration for forums? This is to prevent bots from registering. Most are harmless but I've noticed some are not appropriate(well not pg-13 if you know what I mean) and there are people on this site that are in 6th and 7th grade. For example Quizbowl's forums has something like, "type the sponsor of this site backwards".
We did implement reCAPTCHA several years ago but it appears to be sporadic in requiring the questionnaire. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. I will look into this.
"One of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there." – Steve Jobs
Post Reply

Return to “Feedback”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests