Daily spam, like every single day same thing?

[divsys]

While there are billions on the planet, there are not billions on the internet..

Well…. the world population is touted to push 8 Billion in the very near future.
To get 1 Billion on the internet, you need to reach a little better than 12% of the world population.

Don't know what's the actual % of people on the planet with Inet access (does anyone? CAN anyone?), but I'd bet it's between 35%-65%.  Remember, cell phone access (including data) in much of what has been known as the "Third World" is increasing at an insane rate.

My original statement stands, billions on the internet means a lovely pool of potential sheep.

Hopefully discussions like the one happening here are a sign that the average IIQ (internet IQ) out there is going up and the sheep are getting wiser.
I like to think things are improving, but I do what I can to raise the IIQ wherever I can (hint - have this conversation with your kids, parents, grandparents, students etc. don't be a sheep!)

[NOYB]

Well lets see here.  A few years ago there was a TV commercial in the U.S. selling an anti-static spray (H2O).  People where buying it.  There are a lot of people out there not "in their right mind".  The rest of us end up "paying" for it.

This case can explain a lot about the state of … well just about anything.  One of the problems with such a large population is that it lowers the bar for even dumb ideas to reach critical/perpetual mass, instead of dying off.

[johnpoz]

Ok maybe I worded that bad, yes there are billions on the internet.. Looks like about 3.4 billion from number I found..  To be a bit more clear, there are not billions on forums such as this..  While facebook might have a billion users.. And there are lot of special users there ;)

Ok its gone already (mods here are fast) but there was one I just reported that was about nail fungus..  This is exactly my point.. Lets say you had the worse case of nail fungus on the planet.. You really going to follow some link in a tech fourm that says hey buy some shit here to stop nail fungus.. Come on who could be so that freaking stupid??  It just makes no sense…

btw I have not seen any of that Arabic spam in a while.. Has anyone else, or did they finally get blocked or figure out that their posts were only lasting at most a couple of hours?

[jdillard]

It is more of a shady SEO practice than for direct clicks. Some company pays someone for SEO not knowing what it means and they use a shady script that shotgun blasts the internet with links and hopes some stick, then turns around and tells the company they skillfully SEOed it.

Discourse has a lot of interesting built in community moderation methods that seem to work well (better), but as far as making SMF better, we'll have to take a further look. Questions is a possibility, but with a world-wide audience it can be difficult to come up with accessible questions.

[W4RH34D]

What about a keygenerator running in pfsense that will make you a one time key to use to register in the forums?

Of course you'd have the install issues forums completely open. LOL

[divsys]

While facebook might have a billion users.. And there are lot of special users there ;)

To me it's just like the famous SETI equation about the chances of finding intelligent life in the universe (….%habitable planets X %that have life X %that can communicate... etc. etc.)

Same idea, just different factors (%dumb enough to look for medical solutions on inet vs a doctor, etc. etc.)

Hey, maybe SETI should get involved here!  They could use much of their analysis equipment for detecting coherent information among the general garble.

They wouldn't even have to change the name, it's the Search for Earthbound inTelligence on the Internet.

Probably wouldn't be anymore successful than the last 60 years of effort.    ::)

[Jailer]

@jdillard:

Questions is a possibility, but with a world-wide audience it can be difficult to come up with accessible questions.

There's a good post on the SMF support forums with a couple of examples of the type of questions to use. These examples would work well for a world wide audience.

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=531660.msg3776163#msg3776163

[johnpoz]

^ agreed if you read english then don't have a problem.

Enter the last three numbers seen in dg7564gh
Write the 2 first letters seen in 56kdgt
Write the numbers seen in no2645spam
Write the uppercase letters seen in dfsGHFuyt

Lets get a bit more techy
Enter the cidr for 255.255.192.0
Who is the vendor 18-03-73-A1-0B-A2
what is the port in 192.168.0.1:80
what is common port for https traffic

[Jailer]

Those last 4 questions are waaaay too difficult for an average joe to answer. You put up questions like that people will struggle to register and you'll drive users away out of frustration.

[W4RH34D]

How about put in some kind of mini game that is trivial to win.  Game of pong or 1 level of tetris?