I suggest to start charging every member to use this forum, a little higher for new members for the first year

[didier]

I believe this to be the best solution. how many bots do you think would pay to spam? each member would pay a yearly rate which the money could be used to pay a top of the line IT person/persons to monitor and take care of the site. perhaps the actual mods could have a break? if any money is left at the end of the year, either let it carry over or throw a forum party

 

[dadto6]

I am all for it!

 

[Leon]

You need to create a new stand alone forum site for that. Nocturne Villas will not go for this additional headache (money and membership management, etc.). They don't even have an appetite or [developers] bandwidth to use Captcha or similar tools to weed out most simple bots.

 

[Jim A]

Bad idea IMO for a lot of reasons. So many free forums out there. The ideal would be to expand not to shrink IMO and this would most definitely lead to a much smaller forum. Who will even know about it to join going forward? Is looking free but posting comes at a fee? I think charging not only will eventually end the forum but kind of goes against the whole spirit of the forum in the first place.

 

[Dennis]

Of all the ideas, this is certainly one.

 

[KevinS]

Nocturne has done more than most think to block Spam, and has more planned.

 

[Max1030]

You need to create a new stand alone forum site for that. Nocturne Villas will not go for this additional headache (money and membership management, etc.). They don't even have an appetite or [developers] bandwidth to use Captcha or similar tools to weed out most simple bots.

Why don't we buy it off them? Co-op non-profit member run.

 

[cec1]

Why don't we buy it off them? Co-op non-profit member run.

. . . and risk losing our faithful & unswerving Mods??

 

[JEK]

. . . and risk losing our faithful & unswerving Mods??

Aside from that we have to pay hosting fees, and pay a webmaster and . . . .

 

[cec1]

Aside from that we have to pay hosting fees, and pay a webmaster and . . . .

. . . not to mention the Mod fees! Hahaha!

 

[acatlin]

Just ignore the spam - that's free and easy to spot.
Or, if the goal is better IT, then maybe, but what's the goal? Generally, this site seems to work just fine. (?)

 

[JEK]

Just ignore the spam - that's free and easy to spot.
Or, if the goal is better IT, then maybe, but what's the goal? Generally, this site seems to work just fine. (?)

The spam can completely overwhelm the site and then there are other routine maintenance tasks that need to be looked after or the site stops functioning. It was hard down for nearly two weeks and the moderators don't have administrator privileges or even information on hosting and security certificates.

 

[Leon]

I agree with John: the last outage lasted about 9 days, and yes, our faithful Mods are doing the best job they can, given that they are not IT Support by training (is that the right assumption?) and/or site privileges. So, we're just overcomplicating this discussion. However, John, you can probably ask Nocturne or tell us, if you know, whether they are using, or planning to use, some filtering (reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare, etc.) in the member sign-up that will prevent at least some of the bots from becoming members?

 

[JEK]

CAPTCHA is in place and can be experienced by setting up a test registration. Cloudfare will come after a re=platforming and re-hosting..

 

[Arawak1975]

. . . and risk losing our faithful & unswerving Mods??

Why would the Mods need to change their roles? They kept them after Nocturne purchased the forum.

And if the choice is between simply paying Nocturne to maintain a forum over which we have no say, or having a stake in its ownership and direction, I'd much prefer the latter.

After all, it's the members who give this forum its value. It's our conversations, knowledge, experiences and shared love of this island that make it what it is.

We make the forum, not its owners.

 

[Beachcomber]

Why would the Mods need to change their roles? They kept them after Nocturne purchased the forum.

And if the choice is between simply paying Nocturne to maintain a forum over which we have no say, or having a stake in its ownership and direction, I'd much prefer the latter.

After all, it's the members who give this forum its value. It's our conversations, knowledge, experiences and shared love of this island that make it what it is.

We make the forum, not its owners.

Chicken and egg. Please respect the owners.

 

[Arawak1975]

Chicken and egg. Please respect the owners.

I'm struggling to see the disrespect in simply expressing a different point of view.
Disagreement or suggesting an alternative isn't a sign of disrespect.