I'm new here, and I've noticed this..

[Omnivorous]

I'm sure the first reply to this post (unless I wrote this first line perhaps ) would be "Ahh, this old topic again.. *SIGH!*" I'm sorry if it's been up for debate before, and I'm sure there are reasons for things being as they are..

Anyway, I've noticed that it seems like there's only a handful of people active on the forum. And by "active" I mean they drop by every 2/3 days and reply here and there. Yet, when you make a post and refresh the page 20 minutes later, you can be sure it's gotten 5 more views.

I remember when I found this forum 2 weeks ago, I thought it looked awesome and I found an interesting thread where I wanted to reply right away! I pushed "Register" turned in information, and found out I had to wait to the next day for my account to be -manually- approved of. Sucked bigtime.

I know roguelikes generally are for the patient of the most patient gamers, and that we already are a small niche..but aren't you afraid that having such a "slow" way of joining in to participate on the forum is disencouraging for many and make them go "Ah screw it, I read what I wanted. I wanted to reply something but.. meh *Goes back to sufing/playing favorite RL*"

I don't know, perhaps it's been up for debate before, what do you regulars think? (I'm a newcomer, don't take my post the wrong way and think I'm critisizing or something, just struck me as odd how slow replies are on here, when it's such a great and wide forum)

[Fenrir]

Ahh, this old topic again.. *SIGH!*

It's been a while since I registered, so I don't recall much about the process. Is a manual approval system really necessary if one of those "captcha" thingies were implemented?

[Ex]

I think a lot of members of the community are very busy. Like me, I have college four days a week, and a lot of homework on weekends. I try to post, but a lot of times I'm just very busy. Slashie works quite a bit, too, and most of us rogue devs also develop a roguelike, which takes a lot of time. Also, this is just one facet of the larger roguelike community. A lot of 24/7 discussion now happens on the #rgrd chatroom, and a number of very long threads are posted to r.g.r.d. that are never discussed on the boards. I like the community partially because it's so small. It's much more civilized, intimate and personal this way. Not that I wouldn't like to see it grow, of course

[corremn]

Having to wait a day to become a member is extremely annoying, obviously Slash is a complete control freak.   I guess there are better ways to avoid spam though.

[Karzack]

I usually check in every day or so.  I just don't have much to say though.

[Fenrir]

I'm here several times a day. What can I say? I like you people.

[getter77]

I'm hoping that, even if this registration delay thing I never noticed remains, that the general plans to Liven Roguetemple  will boost the action here even more.

Also, rgrd...seemingly stalking me...now has a report spam button that makes for some rather cathartic "Click/DIE!" action outside actual Roguelike playing.

[Omnivorous]

Well I know lots of you guys are busy, but I mean some of these posts have 1k+ views.

When I googled stuff about roguelikes, I landed on forumposts here alot of the time.

I didn't mean to say that you guys that -are- here, the "hard core" isn't active enough. I just meant to say it seems like there are quite a few, more "casual" roguelike fans, players like me for example that obviously drop by here, but sadly only -read- posts. I do ofcourse understand that this is how it is on all forums.. Just that this forum seems to have suprisingly high view-counts, compared to reply counts.

It'd be fun if more of those who read also would register/reply/make threads.

[Etinarg]

I assume the roguelike groups on usenet are still going strong. That might explain why so relatively few people post here, they just stick to the medium that they are used to.

Among game development forums, this one is sure the best place to discuss roguelikes. I had been lurking for a while, but since I had nothing on-topic to say, I didn't register earlier. So it's no big surprise to see that there are a lot more readers than writers.

[Z]

Yes, I think a captcha would be better. And in my experience, even a stupid captcha created by the admin of a not extremely popular site himself is better at stopping spambots than a general use one, just because it is not standard, and spambots cannot adapt to new things. Like "What are the initials of Andor Drakon?" on the ADOM forum.

[Etinarg]

In my old forum, the default forum software captcha was not enough to stop the bots. But I added a modification, so that people had to enter the letters backwards. Bots couldn't read the hint and failed to register. Unfortunately many people also could not read and failed as well.

But something like that works - every little change that needs thinking will keep bots out.

Briefly said: Z is completely right with his suggestion.

[Z]

Slash probably knows how many spambots are trying to register...

Uh, apparently the ADOM forum was heavily spammed several days ago... Probably the bots managed to get some human help. Hopefully it's easy to fix...

Yes, humans sometimes fail such captchas as well, but I think this is no problem with well designed (i.e. well explained) ones. With scrambled letters plus modification, I suppose people do not read texts if they expect it contains no new information (i.e. assume that it contains the usual "enter the words in the picture"). With the ADOM question, I suppose that people could think that such idiotic question is a joke and they can answer whatever they want, or they could be not sure of their English skills ("what are initials? and who is this Andor Drakon? I thought that the initials of Andor Drakon would be A.D. but why ask such an idiotic question?")... but maybe are people answer correctly soon enough and there are no such problems.

[Slash]

There are about 5 spambots trying to register weekly, but they can create lots of hassle... I dont have enough Action Points left to develop an alternate captcha or modification, I will leave it open for a week and see how it works

[Krice]

I found an interesting thread where I wanted to reply right away! I pushed "Register" turned in information, and found out I had to wait to the next day for my account to be -manually- approved of. Sucked bigtime.

Sucks if you only think this from the forum user's perspective. I can understand that cleaning bot messages is not cool if you can avoid that by using manual registering. It's not that bad. If someone gets angry with it I believe we don't lose a great thinker from the forum.

ps. It seems that one bot got through already.

[Etinarg]

Three now. It seems they just waited till the forum defenses are down