Shopsmith Forums

If any of you are for real - Happy Birthday.

I can't help but wonder why these user names are not "permanently" deleted from the system. This happens every year and will reoccur two or three times over the next month or so.

One suspects that it would take considerable time and effort on admins part to purge the membership list of the tens of thousands of bogus members.
And that their time is better spent addressing more pressing problems.

rpd wrote:One suspects that it would take considerable time and effort on admins part to purge the membership list of the tens of thousands of bogus members.
And that their time is better spent addressing more pressing problems.

Yes, I suppose you have a point - even though the membership here (even with all those bogus members) is only about 45,000.
(2151 pages with 20 members listed on each page)

dusty wrote:

rpd wrote:One suspects that it would take considerable time and effort on admins part to purge the membership list of the tens of thousands of bogus members.
And that their time is better spent addressing more pressing problems.

Yes, I suppose you have a point - even though the membership here (even with all those bogus members) is only about 45,000.
(2151 pages with 20 members listed on each page)

And what criteria does one use in determining which are bogus?

JPG wrote:

dusty wrote:

rpd wrote:One suspects that it would take considerable time and effort on admins part to purge the membership list of the tens of thousands of bogus members.
And that their time is better spent addressing more pressing problems.

Yes, I suppose you have a point - even though the membership here (even with all those bogus members) is only about 45,000.
(2151 pages with 20 members listed on each page)

And what criteria does one use in determining which are bogus?

Joined but have never posted, and last active on the day they joined.

There was a point several years ago where we were getting hundreds of these new "members" at a time. As Dusty points out many have the exact same birthday. One suspects they were signed up by a bot for some nefarious purpose that never came to fruition. Probably because we are so efficient at reporting Spam.

rpd wrote:And what criteria does one use in determining which are bogus?

Joined but have never posted, and last active on the day they joined.

So NOBODY can join and lurk? They HAVE to post.

beeg wrote:

rpd wrote:And what criteria does one use in determining which are bogus?

Joined but have never posted, and last active on the day they joined.

So NOBODY can join and lurk? They HAVE to post.

Ignoring the mis-quote, that answer was to the what criteria to use IF one was to purge 'bogus' user ids. I think undertaking that task is not advisable. I doubt admin has time to do any thing of the sort. I was considering the possibility of an alternate solution when I asked it.

beeg wrote:

rpd wrote:

jpg wrote:And what criteria does one use in determining which are bogus?

Joined but have never posted, and last active on the day they joined.

So NOBODY can join and lurk? They HAVE to post.

Of course not.
This was a hypothetical response to a question from jpg as to how the thousands of memberships that were made by an automated system, or perhaps people working at a troll farm, might possibly be differentiated from legitimate members.

The distinguishing characteristics that I identified are
- the only time that they have ever been active (Note. - this term includes Logging In, but not posting, ie lurking) was when they registered.
AND
- they have never posted, and they have never came back and Lurked
- many clusters of them share the same birthday (Month, Day and often Year) Like the large cluster for January 1st that caused Dusty to start this thread in the first place.

So, as an example. here is the list of January 1st birthdays.
and picking the first of the cluster of six who had their 48th birthday on January 1. we have member suspendsc01
Note that they were signed in only once for a total of six minutes when they registered
They live in that hot bed of Shopsmith use, Iraq, (were Shopsmiths ever even sold in Iraq?)
Their interests are - game (board, computer, prey?)
Their occupation is - bussiness
and, Oh look, their signature line is an advertisement for a business, including a link to their website. Sounds like SPAM to me.

But have no fear, Admin is a very busy person, the membership rolls will never be purged.