User account policy changes

[Zannick]

Due to massive amounts of spam and spam-only accounts I have made the following changes to the aichallenge.org forums:

1. New user accounts (users in the Newly Registered Users group) will have their first post put into the moderation queue. Once your first post is approved, you should be able to post normally. This may temporarily include you if before today you had 5 or fewer posts. If your post is not being approved in a timely manner, please join the IRC channel (#aichallenge on freenode) and let me (Zannick) or another admin or moderator know.

2. All user accounts created on or after 19 Dec 2011 that had 0 posts have been deleted. I apologize if this included anyone legitimate. If this included you, please reregister. (Unfortunately there are still many suspicious-looking accounts that were registered during the last contest; at some future date I will prune older accounts that still have no posts.)

3. Past contest subforums (not including Ants) have been changed to be read-only.

Please continue to report spam through the board's reporting mechanism; it makes it easier to find. Please also feel free to let me know on IRC if the spam problem gets out of hand again.

[AustinSpafford]

Thank you very much for taking those steps!

While it's sad to see barriers put up, it's good to know that something is being done about it.

-Austin

[Parasprites]

Thanks for implementing this change. Setting up email notifications is annoying when 90% of the new posts are just spam.

On the other hand it doesn't seem to be working. There have been several spams in the last day alone.

[Zannick]

Yeah, sorry. The interface for this is confusing. It should be sending all new users' posts to the moderation queue now.

Also, I didn't properly make the Past Contests forums read-only before. I've done so now, but changing my mind partially: the "Misc" subforum for each of them will remain open, for historical discussions of the relevant contest.

[Parasprites]

Also, the post button seems a bit wonky. It took me a while to figure out how to post in this thread again. I guess if you visit the thread through a read only forum, the thread itself becomes read only?

[Parasprites]

Speak of the devil...

[Zannick]

All right, I set "Newly Registered Users" to be the new users' default group, which should take care of that. I tried it with a test account and the post was put in the queue.

[Parasprites]

Now it seems like they're just mocking us.

[gakman]

The next competition could be about stopping spam posts on the forum

[Zannick]

Still working on it. :/

I'm probably going to do another user wipe by the end of the month, so anyone who signed up since I posted this thread will need to make a post before I do that, or make a new account after.