This site been under troll attack for a long time, but it has recently grown out of control. To give you an idea how bad it is, the first new account created in April received a user number of 330663. By early this afternoon, we were up to user 331541. That’s almost 1100 new users in the last two and a half days.
While these accounts have been getting created for a long time, the pace has really picked up. It used to be that they’d just put links in their user profiles which isn’t overly disruptive. But this new batch is posting diaries at an astonishing pace. It got so bad that I closed the diaries because I can’t keep up with deleting them. Yesterday morning I opened the diaries for ninety minutes so a legitimate user could post a diary and at least nine spam diaries went up. Last night I opened it again and forgot to close it. In the morning there were over 30 new spam diaries.
They’re basically killing the site and pretty soon they’ll just fill up my database, so I have to do something. The site design is from 2005. It runs on SCOOP software that is no longer supported. So, I figure if I am going to have to hire a programmer to protect me from the spammers, I might as well just do a total overhaul.
I have no idea how much that will cost. I think I paid about $5000 to the programmer who designed the site for me. It all depends on many hours it takes, and that depends on what I decide to do.
So, if any of you have any good ideas for how to improve the site, let me know in the comments. What web sites do you visit that you really like for the user experience?
The one thing I love about SCOOP is the comments. I hate comments you can’t respond to. I hate comments that aren’t threaded. Facebook comments are cool, but I wouldn’t want to do that exclusively because I actually like anonymous comments. Some of you wouldn’t participate if you had to reveal yourselves.
In any case, give me your opinions. And if can put something in the kitty that would be awesome and totally appreciated. You can contribute through PayPal:
Or snail mail:
Martin Longman
P.O. Box 269
Exton, PA 19341
Also, too, if you want to post a diary, shoot me an email and I’ll open the diary function for you (unless you are a spam troller).
