400 members

[Dennis Markham]

Good points made by all about the Forum with discussion on where it may evolve.  As a side-note I will take the opportunity on this topic to mention what I do when new members join.

I get an e-mail notification that a new member has joined the forum.  I am provided with the user name and a link to his/her profile.  The first thing I do with each one is click on the I.P. Address.  I'm looking for suspicious activity such as spammers.  I then go to this web address:

http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup

There I (and anyone) can plug in the I.P. address and see where that member is located.  Often their location will give a clue as to the legitimacy of the person joining.  Often the spammer will show his location as being somewhere in the U.S.A. (I remember one that put Tampa, Fl) when in fact they were in Latvia.  In fact many of the spammers do come from Latvia.

If I determine right then and there this person joined for reasons other than to discuss or read about telephony, I will ban the I.P. address (so they can't join under another name) and then delete the account.  When I delete an account the forum count drops.  So if currently there are 400, we probably would have over 500 if I hadn't deleted the accounts.

If I am unsure I will often do a Google search on the user name.  You'd be surprised to find that the same user name will join dozens of forums.  They register and never post.  I don't know what their ultimate motive is, or how they plan to do what they do but they join forums that entail a multitude of interests.  I pull the plug on them right now.

Recently there have been many members that have joined from a place called Gurenesy which appears to be in the UK.  Not wanting to turn away any of our friends from the U.K. I have not deleted any of those accounts although none have been active nor have any of them logged in since their initial registration.  I suspect an issue there but for now I'm going to just wait and see.  One of those member names is douglas mays and yet another, Altonnewton.  Altonnewton's I.P. also comes back from Gurensey.  A Google search shows him/her joining other forums with no posts.

I keep a folder of banned I.P.s and user names for future reference.  It's not uncommon to get two or three new members in a particular day.  

If I pull the plug on someone by accident that you know, please let me know.  I'm trying to keep out the riff-raff.  I do realize that many legit members create an account and never post.  Some may never be back.  We have a ton of members that have joined and never returned....but may some day.

Thanks again to all of YOU for it is all of you that make this forum what it is.  We can only get better.

I'm open to suggestions.  If anyone wants a new "board" created or a new "category" just let me know and it will be done.

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to let you all know that I pay attention to people who join up...trying to avoid problems before they happen.  In fact I deleted one account once while the person was still adding to their profile.  They had already made about four links to gambling web sites and the I.P. was from India or someplace.

[Dan/Panther]

Where do you find the I.P.Address.,
D/P

[Dennis Markham]

Dan, it's probably a function of the "Administrator" but when I click on the members/guests it displays their I.P. Address along side their name.  

It also shows on the member's "profile page".

[Greg G.]

I get an e-mail notification that a new member has joined the forum.  I am provided with the user name and a link to his/her profile.  The first thing I do with each one is click on the I.P. Address.  I'm looking for suspicious activity such as spammers.  I then go to this web address:

http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup

Great tool!  I just looked up the source of an email that had responded to an ad I had on CL.  Somebody in eastern Europe. 

Geo-Location Information
Country  Slovakia
State/Region  02
City  Bratislava
Latitude  48.15
Longitude  17.1167

[gpo706]

Dennis - do you mean "Guernsey" its part of the Channel Islands, off the French coast.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&cr=countryUK|countryGB&client=firefox-a&hs=VzM&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=s&q=guernsey&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Guernsey&gl=uk&ei=7xopTNfTC6KksQbLsJXEBA&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ8gEwAA

Slight tax haven, improbable location for spammers though?

[Dennis Markham]

Yes, that's what I meant.  I obviously misspelled the name.  We've had at least five members join from there.  I thought it seemed unlikely that that many people from there would join the telephone forum, but I suppose it is possible.

[bwanna]

we're all jolly good fellows! a very special thanks to all the topic moderators & our ever vigilant administrator.