UESPWiki:Archive/CP Forum Alternative

Forum Alternative
This has been taken care of. Daveh has disabled guest posting on the forums, and the links to them have been restored. Thanks for all of your input on this situation. --Aristeo 00:13, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

Spammers have completely destroyed the forums. Because of the state it's in, I propose we switch over to Google groups to replace our forums. That's what OblivioWiki is using, and they have told me that it works well. It has many measures against spammers even with guest posting enabled, and it's very useful.

Google groups allow the following (derived from OblivioWiki):

Multiple moderators and co-owners
Spam protection for e-mails and the site itself
Optional E-mail alerts
Optional email alerts, including an option for a once a day summary or an alert for every post
The ability to pick your own group nickname no matter what your main account is, allowing us to keep our wiki nicknames
Messages can be viewed through an atom feed. (I'm sure we could also use Feedburner to convert it to RSS if needed) 

You've probally noticed that I removed the link to the forums on the left hand side. This will probally stay removed as we are linking to adult pornographical websites, which cannot be tolerated. --Aristeo 00:27, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

:I never use the forums anyway, so I'm not very sensitive to this.  That said... Folks can still use wiki talk pages for forum type stuff. Or you could temporarily direct people to OblivioWiki forums. So in short, use other solutions while waiting for Dave to get back. --Wrye 01:25, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

:: Talk pages will just have to suffice. --Aristeo 02:50, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

:Unfortunately I don't use the forums either, but I just went on there to see how bad the damage was and it's the most ignorantly disgusting thing I've ever seen, what is the purpose of that, people say telemarketers are bad. Anyways, I agree the move to Google groups would be in the best interest of the forums, however, I also have to agree with Wrye that it should be put on temporary hold until Daveh returns. The forums currently are done, I don't feel any productivity will be lost holding off on their return for a few, it would take some time to set them up on Google groups anyway. Aristeo, if you feel skeptical, like you sound about going through with it, then that's just more of a reason to hold off. If you really feel it needs to be an ASAP thing, then go ahead and get it ready on Google groups, when Daveh gets back if he agrees then it will be ready to go right then and there, if he disagrees then it'll be lost time but I don't see any reason why he would say that, something needs done for certain. Two things though: Do we really need Guest accounts? I know it's annoying to sign up for everything on the internet just to ask a question, but if someone really needed to post and didn't want an account they could just use bugmenot or similar. Two: Aristeo, you should go ahead and remove the Forums link at the top of the main page in the UESP description, it's one of the protected pages so a op needs to do it. --AlbinoMudcrab 03:26, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

::The description of the site is editable via Template:Home. I would do it myself, but people are poking me trying to get me to leave with them. --Aristeo 07:01, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

:I haven't used the forums much either, but having said that, I agree with Wrye and AlbinoMudcrab. We should wait until Daveh comes back to take a firm decision on what to do with the forums (get more security controls, move to Google, etc.). In the mean time, the best thing to do is to put them away and tray to clean them as much as possible, as people may have bookmarked the page. --DrPhoton 03:34, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

:I have to say, I like having the forum here. And, since the last time I checked it allowed Guest Posting, meaning you don't need to sign up and login into an account. It really isn't people that are doing the spamming, but bots. If we had a signup and login procedure like on most forums, the amount of spam would go down quite a bit. Also, what is the amount of moderators on the forum? One? Two? And how busy are they on the wiki? Maybe we should get some people that are not that busy with the wiki to do the forum moderating? - Magnus 11:19AM, July 10/06 (-4:00GMT)

:Shut them down for the moment and don't do anything else. Then Daveh can make the decision when he gets back. If he decides to wipe them and restart with the same system they can always be reactivated, but right now in the current state leaving them up is not a good idea. If they've been hacked to distribute viruses and spam, there's no telling what else they're doing as a bot. Quillan  10:43, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

:What about WebBBS as the guys from Halo.Bungie.Org? Its simple but from what I've seen until now a quite effective system since the HBO forums are quite spam-free in comparision to others, check out the forum faqs over to see how the system works more or less. --Anselm 16:38, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

::I was looking for something that looked like the vBulletin forums, as people (like me) are more familiar with them. --Aristeo 18:01, 10 July 2006 (EDT)

: I have used the forum a lot and have watch them deteriorate in an oasis for spammers. Personally I'd rather avoid google groups like the plague as I am VERY dubious as to the morality of the companies business activity in China and because the service is there to serve them not the user. I'd go with a version of vBulletin as suggested above or similar package. Just my opinion though. - Pseudopath 17:01, 11 July 2006 (GMT)

:I have spent time every day on the Oblivion forum and I really miss it. I enjoyed reading and exchanging experiences with the other gamers. I hope that you'll be able to bring them back. Preferably without the guest function. People should log in. /Akela

: I have tried to use the forum, but abstained it because the little response i got on my posts. However, i realised (and told Aritsteo at irc) at that time that the forum is  attackable and under attack (but not that amount we encounter now) by spam-bots. Not only because of guest posting allowed, but also by bots that create accounts and put the spam into their profile (no direct impact, but if the user table growes too large, the performance will drop.). My advise would be: take the forum offline, clean it or save a database dump and install it anew, disable guest-posting, enable e-mail check on registration, bring it online again. (Old man's mumblings: I personaly recognised the time when the dream of a free and sane use of the internet ended, when   (followed by others) granted mass access to the average antisocial. If you haven't seen it yourself, you can't imagine what the net was a polite and comfortable place before. Only rarely niches that are untroubled by those people survived.) -- The Nerevarine 16:52, 11 July 2006 (EDT)

:If you want I do have a vbulletin license in my name and I am not using it at all right now. I also have my own web site to host it from. If you would like more information email me at trl_tanis@yahoo.com I still own the license but I would just need to pay 30 bucks to update the forum which I have no problem what so ever paying myself. You have no idea how much the site has helped me and I would like the ooppurtunity to pay you back.:    Tanis

:: That's very kind of you, thanks. --Aristeo 16:36, 14 July 2006 (EDT)

:The forums here are good.  They're not as fanboy-ish one way or the other as the official forums (I mean, how many times can you read some 15 year-old kid tell you why Morrowind was better?), which I thought was a huge plus and makes them worth saving.  Guest posting is probably the root of the problem.  Yeah, it sucks to force people to create an account before they start posting, but it boils down to a choice between moving to a format that is not designed for this kind of thing (google groups), or asking people to register first.  People kind of expect that they're going to have to register for a forum to use it, anyway, and signing up with a disposable email address isn't hard. -- GenghisJohn

:: Jep, the problems we are experiencing are not caused by the software but by the access policy on the forums. The discussion is drifting away from the problems root cause: "Lets transfer from the Arizona to the Titanic, but let both ships stay their course." -- The Nerevarine 07:19, 17 July 2006 (EDT)

::: It's a lot harder to moderate the forums from PHPBB because the only things moderators can do is delete and close. Moderators have no power over the forum, just limited control over the posts. That being said, if someone were to attack the forums, there would be nothing anyone but Daveh could do to stop it. I know that the current attacks are done by bots, and I know that the access policy has something to do with it. However, PHPBB has been known for its easiness to hack over the years, and I vote for differnt software.

::: It just so happens that I'm experienced in the development of ASP-based forums. I was part of a robotics team a while ago, and I was required to make a forum for them. I also made a fan-forum called ElderScrollsForum.com, and I would be willing to convert it over to the UESP forum, and give admin rights as well as FTP access over to Daveh. It would be very easy to mask a subdomain like " to point to ElderScrollsForum.com. I'll even cover the charges for the site.

::: There's also another alternative: We could have everything on the wiki. I request that you all give Wikia.com a visit, and check out their forum system that they have set up. All we would need is the InputBox extension, Parser Functions, and an update to the latest wiki version and we could make it work similarly to theirs.

:::--Aristeo 18:46, 17 July 2006 (EDT)

: I miss da forums :( --Poopmongrel 18:46, 17 July 2006 (EDT)

:: :Daveh doesn't link advertisements. We don't even have ads on the site that make money for our site, let alone for other sites. --Aristeo 00:56, 22 July 2006 (EDT)

: You could just use invisionfree, there free, and great --Rethenmiir Hlao 12:16 AM, June 20

:Aristeo have you ever seen the back end of a vbulletin? If you go to mine and sign up Ill make you an admin with it and you can play around with it to see if you like it or not.  Tanis P.s. i sent you a private message on your boards with the URL

::Yep, it's a pretty cool piece of software. --Aristeo 16:38, 23 July 2006 (EDT)