nearly 5000 members!

[jimsflies]

I just wanted to point out CR is about to cross a forum milestone... our 5,000th member!

I appreciate our members for hanging in there...growing an online community, especially these days with facebook, twitter, instagram, etc. takes patience and a dedicated the membership. While there is nothing magical about 5,000 members, my observations indicate that around that point where growth occurs a little more rapidly as there are enough members to keep the discussions going...which encourages others to join in the conversation.

So congrats to our community!

Lets keep up the good work...helping each other to be more successful reefkeepers!

:cheers:

[larryandlaura]

Great news Jim, and thanks for your hard work on the forum.

[Ocho Cinco]

That's awesome. Let's hope it continues to go up!

[larryandlaura]

What's the count now Jim?

[MizTanks]

Am I the only one who thinks something strange is going on?

[larryandlaura]

Am I the only one who thinks something strange is going on?

What do you mean Jamie?

[MizTanks]

Well all the new members joining daily? Yet none are posting?? Just seems strange to me is all.
36 new members so far this month alone?
43 for the month of February?

[jimsflies]

I don't think its all that odd. A lot of folks join but don't post. They follow along with discussions as well as research topics they are interested in. At any given time we have 30-40 members logged on. But not many are posting.

While its possible a few new members were bots (I look at all the new registrations emails, ips, etc.), we have implemented the latest in spammer/bot prevention here on CR. Typically spammer/bots are going to sign up for the purpose of making posts and we haven't seen much of that either.

Members like you and Larry for example are one in a 1000. :) At the end of the day, its a numbers game. But my forum observations over the years indicates that we are at a point where growth and activity increases.

When members post, it encourages others to post as well...draws them out of there shells a if you will. If nothing else, it provides the lurkers more material to read while they are visiting CR.

[jimsflies]

What's the count now Jim?

Looks like we are at 5002 now. :)

[Tankster]

Looks like we are at 5002 now. :)

How many now?

[larryandlaura]

Dang finally over 5k.

[MizTanks]

97 yesterday!!! WTH?!! Tell me those are not being generated....shameful [emoji20]

[Sir Patrick]

What/Who is Baidu Spider ?

[larryandlaura]

What/Who is Baidu Spider ?

Cool name but no idea who most of these new people are.

[jimsflies]

97 yesterday!!! WTH?!! Tell me those are not being generated....shameful [emoji20]

Out of curiosity... who are you shaming?

[MizTanks]

Nobody in particular. But you have to admit that it is a very odd happening here. Which leads me (if nobody else) to believe that they are being generated by something or someone.
I just don't understand why? It makes me sad [emoji45]

[jimsflies]

What/Who is Baidu Spider ?

Spiders are bots that crawl websites to provide data to search engines. Baidu is the largest Chinese search engine.

[jimsflies]

Nobody in particular. But you have to admit that it is a very odd happening here. Which leads me (if nobody else) to believe that they are being generated by something or someone.
I just don't understand why? It makes me sad [emoji45]

First, I can assure you that we are not generating fake accounts.

I have been skeptical of some of the new members as well. Over the past few weeks, I have stiffened our already tough anti spam countermeasures. One of the countermeasures we have been using is checking IPs against a database of known spammers. This database is updated by participating forums such as CR. When a spammer is identified, the IP is submitted to the database so that they can't sign up on other sites.

On Saturday, I changed a few things around...including renaming the default file name of the registration page so that forum spam bots couldn't automatically find that page. I also changed the security question which apparently I made too easy...given the number that we had sign up. I realized around 8pm Saturday evening that we were getting a lot of new users and actually turned off the ability to register until I could change the security question to a captcha image. With registrations turned back on, we are still getting a lot of new registrations despite the tougher captcha.

It is nearly impossible to tell whether new accounts are legit or not. I'm with you in that it seems they are not. However, I have received pms from some new users that I would have guessed to be spammers based on the odd user name, etc. which indicates they are legit. Thus, mass deleting all new registrations probably isn't a great option.

I am continuing to work on stiffening our spam defenses. I have also removed the Meet and Greet forum from displaying when you click "Whats New". Whether or not these are legit, I think that many welcome threads is overwhelming the other discussions.

[MizTanks]

Thank you Jim for doing all that you do do [emoji13]

[jimsflies]

do do? :poop:

[Sir Patrick]

Spiders are bots that crawl websites to provide data to search engines. Baidu is the largest Chinese search engine.


I was afraid it was a spam/virus. It seemed to be all over the site.

[jimsflies]

As far as bots, baidu spiders are considered good. Although, it is debatable how traffic from China will benefit us and our sponsors.

[MizTanks]

do do? :poop:

Oops! Job well done Jim [emoji39]