"URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

[Lunaped]

Not only can you not post URLs, you can't even use a Smilie. It gets annoying after awhile... you know, editing and all that.

Why not just remove smilies until the user has reached X amount of posts and have the smilie activated for them?

And that goes the same for the linking URLs and etc...

[Mhurron]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

A smile is a url. So is a quote unless you do it manually. The filter works as it should.

[Lunaped]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

Indeed a smile is a URL although you might as well just get rid of it for newbs. There is a hack for that for vB.

A quote is NOT a url. It is simplying using a php script to form a box around text unless the text itself as a url in it.

And filter? What filter? The URL filter? It's a bit silly but sure.

[Ziero]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

Indeed a smile is a URL although you might as well just get rid of it for newbs. There is a hack for that for vB.
A quote is NOT a url. It is simplying using a php script to form a box around text unless the text itself as a url in it.
And filter? What filter? The URL filter? It's a bit silly but sure.

technically quotes here have the ability to link you to the original post, it's the little blue box next to the quotees name.

[Mhurron]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

A quote generated by that quote button and not just by typing [ quote ] is indeed a url. It highlights a section as a link to the original post.

[Lunaped]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

technically quotes here have the ability to link you to the original post, it's the little blue box next to the quotees name.

Indeed, although it uses a specific php script to do that, not just the regular hoo-ha of "smilie image url here" and "url location here"

[Nuriko]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

technically quotes here have the ability to link you to the original post, it's the little blue box next to the quotees name.

So I see, but it should be possible to remove that if you know how. Asking that of somebody new to the forums is rather a lot, though. It's too bad the filter can't filter out all URLs that are NOT "http://www.ffxionline.com/*"

[Taskmage]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

The filter is effective in that on several occasions it has stopped obviously RMT and/or advertising posts from being made, but it is clumsy in its implementation and in my opinion does more harm than good. There was a period of time when we were bombarded with spam and sweeping measures seemed attractive, but the amount of time and frustration caused to new members losing or retyping posts because of an innocuous isn't worth stopping the scarce attempts we've been getting the past several months 15 minutes before we would have stopped them manually anyway.

I think it should be removed, but I'm not the only voice that matters. I'll bring it up to the rest of the team.

[Lunaped]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

The filter is effective in that on several occasions it has stopped obviously RMT and/or advertising posts from being made, but it is clumsy in its implementation and in my opinion does more harm than good. There was a period of time when we were bombarded with spam and sweeping measures seemed attractive, but the amount of time and frustration caused to new members losing or retyping posts because of an innocuous isn't worth stopping the scarce attempts we've been getting the past several months 15 minutes before we would have stopped them manually anyway.

I think it should be removed, but I'm not the only voice that matters. I'll bring it up to the rest of the team.

It does indeed cause frustration that you have to go back do a 'repost' or just simply going back, copying what you wrote (if you can) and then editing your post.

Like the previous poster above you stated, limit the URLs to specific sites such as, playonline.com, the ffxi wiki site, as well as ffxionline sites until they hit X posts.

I can understand the level of frustration it must be for the admins to go through and delete users because of spamming but that's what IP bans are for.

[Icemage]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

I can understand the level of frustration it must be for the admins to go through and delete users because of spamming but that's what IP bans are for.

IP bans aren't as easy as you'd think. A lot of the spam attacks we see are inbound from many different IP ranges, and it's a pain in the neck to track down whole IP blocks and ban them since we have to reverse DNS the offender and WhoIs against the resulting domain to get the IP range (which doesn't always work).

The non-URL thing is definitely a bit much - smilies should certainly not be getting caught by it (though they are) - but you also have to remember that we're all volunteers here, and all of us have limited amounts of time to police the forums (plus we'd like to actually spend some time playing FFXI now and again).


Icemage

[eticket109]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

The only frustration I see with it is when users who have been here for years get hit with the filter. It's rare, but that's happened a few times.

[Lunaped]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

IP bans aren't as easy as you'd think. A lot of the spam attacks we see are inbound from many different IP ranges, and it's a pain in the neck to track down whole IP blocks and ban them since we have to reverse DNS the offender and WhoIs against the resulting domain to get the IP range (which doesn't always work).

The non-URL thing is definitely a bit much - smilies should certainly not be getting caught by it (though they are) - but you also have to remember that we're all volunteers here, and all of us have limited amounts of time to police the forums (plus we'd like to actually spend some time playing FFXI now and again).


Icemage

IP's are recorded and if I remember correctly, vB even records the different ips coming from one specific user. Sometimes it might just be easier to do a xxx.xxx.xx*.*** ban.

Of course you all are volunteers and I'm not saying that you guys are gettign paid. I do understand (really, I do), but not being able to even post with a smilie because of a URL restriction? I think it's a bit ridiculous.

Like I said, if you guys want to keep the "No URL until x Post" up then just get rid of Smilies and the link image all together as to not confuse people OR at least instead of erasing the whole message that they've just typed up, have it just delete the URL with a message saying that the URL cannot be posted.

[Icemage]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

IP's are recorded and if I remember correctly, vB even records the different ips coming from one specific user. Sometimes it might just be easier to do a xxx.xxx.xx*.*** ban.

Not that simple in vBulletin since it uses text-matching. And broadside barrage IP bans like that are just begging to get people caught in the crossfire - we don't like to do it, because we have members from all over the globe, and we try to verify that we don't have any active members on a targetted IP range before we implement an IP ban (this is our last resort, as a result, since this process is very time consuming).

Of course you all are volunteers and I'm not saying that you guys are gettign paid. I do understand (really, I do), but not being able to even post with a smilie because of a URL restriction? I think it's a bit ridiculous.

Like I said, if you guys want to keep the "No URL until x Post" up then just get rid of Smilies and the link image all together as to not confuse people OR at least instead of erasing the whole message that they've just typed up, have it just delete the URL with a message saying that the URL cannot be posted.

I definitely agree that smilies should be allowed since they're generated internally by the site. But that's out of my personal hands - have to ask Taskmage, AKosygin or PiNG about that.


Icemage

[Feba]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

Banning IP ranges is a huge step backwards from the URL system-- Would you rather be completely unable to do anything on the site, or have to rewrite a post because you put a URL in one?

Personally, I'd support making more moderators. The ones we have are great, but more people means more time covered, which means less chance of someone slipping through. Perhaps make a subclass of moderators that can temporarily ban users for a day or two, and then have those temporarily banned accounts forwarded to one of the existing SMod/Admins for deletion? Then just give that status to anyone who's here frequently enough to be useful and long enough to be trusted, and if they use it for ANYTHING other than stopping spammers, take away that ability.

[Lunaped]

Re: "URLs not allowed" are getting a bit annoying.

OK, so I was thinking about this, and sure, we can have more MODs patrolling around the corridors of FFXIonline but at the same time, some people will just get too trigger happy with their new MOD status. I've seen this plenty of times before and I don't see how FFXI online is any different then other big forums (regardless if they're MMO forums or not).

In all honesty, allow the users to have some sort of responsibility to this too. Meaning, if there is a user that is spamming, then have users use the "Spam" function to ban the spammer for a day so the MODs can have a look at it to see if it's a spammer or not, and they can do what they wish with the user account.

Then again, this is just my .02.