Suggested improvements to the forum

[Juan Artigas]

Thanks for your suggestions Hudson, as all suggestions, they are taken into consideration to improve this site.

[Hudson Ensz]

Very sorry if they are not practical :

[SergeS]

How about upgrading to a more recent version of PHP/BB? The place is swarming with spambots it seems, and that keeps legitimate posters and readers away. On the BB where I am a moderator myself, we use v 3.05 and have no problems whatsoever.

I also noticed that I have access to the moderator control panel - I think it's read only for me, but still. Maybe this was done intentionally?

[Ken Boorman]

I was sure Juan got the latest versions of PHP/BB available. I am sorry you are experiencing a forum "swarming with spambots". There are 5 of us trying to stay on top the the spammers and I thought we were doing a good job. Please report any posts you think are spam and as soon as the next moderator/administrator comes to the forum, we will deal with them immediately.
I tested your permissions and couldn't see how you could have access to the Moderator Control Panel. Can you still access it?

Ken

[Alex Calder]

Spam bots are just part fo the net. Owners, administrators and moderators do the best they can.
The ones I hate are the people who are now paid to register accounts that are later handed over to
a bot... The only solutions I see for that are a bit too drastic to implement.

[Juan Artigas]

[quote="SergeS"]How about upgrading to a more recent version of PHP/BB? The place is swarming with spambots it seems, and that keeps legitimate posters and readers away. On the BB where I am a moderator myself, we use v 3.05 and have no problems whatsoever.

We have 3.07 installed...

[SergeS]

I was sure Juan got the latest versions of PHP/BB available. I am sorry you are experiencing a forum "swarming with spambots". There are 5 of us trying to stay on top the the spammers and I thought we were doing a good job. Please report any posts you think are spam and as soon as the next moderator/administrator comes to the forum, we will deal with them immediately.

I know it's part of the forums on the net, but I was surprised to see several spambots, where we have no issues at all, and our forum is a lot busier. I realize it's a tough job, and not always possible to completely avoid spambots. Meant no harm

I tested your permissions and couldn't see how you could have access to the Moderator Control Panel. Can you still access it?

Ken

Yes, I see a link to it in the top left section, just below the line with the link to my personal inbox:



When I click I access the control panel (moderator log, moderator queue, etc.). Do you want me to see if I can ban someone ?

[Juan Artigas]

Sergey,

I really want to thank you for pointing this out, particularly for being stubborn in pointing my mistakes. In fact, I had made an error when assigned permission for new users. It is hopefully now corrected and all should be back to normal, hopefully also with less SPAM bots attacking us, something I am sure our moderators will be happy with.

Thanks again, and please, if you see any other error, don't hesitate to let me know about it.

[SergeS]

Will do. I like this forum - and your website - a lot, it's a great and reliable resource for 'anything cichlid'. It's easy to find information on the net, but it's a lot trickier to find good quality information. This is one of the few sites I visit if I really want to know for sure Keep up the good work!

[SergeS]

Hey, it's me again This time with a suggestion: I see - in the Malawi sub-forum - quite a few people that are looking where to buy a certain species of fish. Whilst I do not want to chase them away, I don't think that is the right place for that? Maybe it''s better to create a sub-forum for 'for sale' and 'looking for'-type questions? I think that one of the reasons why these questions are there, is that there is no room for them elsewhere. Or maybe you should not allow it altogether, which would suit this forum perfectly, but that's up to you

[Juan Artigas]

Sergey,

Thanks for your message. It is in fact not allowed to post messages with commercial intention on any way. We don't pay to keep this forum up and work so hard so others can make money out of us. If you see such a post, please do not hesitate to let us know, me of any administrator. The post and the poster will be gone from the forum at once.

I really appreciate it

[Juan Artigas]

Thanks Sergey I did some cleaning. I will come back later today to do some deeper cleaning yet. We are really with low tolerance and time to real with this kind of stuff breaking the rules they accepted when signing in. So I let out the courtesy of warning out and go straight to delete post, user and ban the IP subnet. I don't want this forum ruined by commercial activity. Thank you!

[SergeS]

Thanks Juan, never realized that you had such a strict policy here re. commercial activity, but it makes perfect sense to me

[Alton]

I am courious why my posts take 2 days to be accepted? I never had this happen on a forum before and courious why it is this way? I am a member on a few websites and heard about this one on one of them. So I joined to learn more and be able to talk with some of the great minds in Chiclids. This is just my opinion but seems to me if someone new comes to your site and they can not communicate with others for quick answers they will move to another site. I understand the issue with Bots, they can be horrible and cause problems. But people also like to chat and waiting 2 days seems a bit much.

[Juan Artigas]

Thank you "Alton" for your feedback. This is what we can do with our resources. I am glad there are some other forums out there where you don't have to pass through this inconvenience. I have removed you from the moderation group so you can go ahead and post freely. Enjoy!

[Alton]

Thanks Juan, I greatly apperciate you doing this for me. Looking forward to learning from all the knowledgable people on here. Hope you have a great day and I know how much you do so I wish to thank you for all your hard work.

THANKS JUAN!!

[smitty]

It is about time this forum which I consider to be awesome get with the times when it comes to posting pictures. On many of the other forums you can chose photos right from your computer. Also they need to increase the size. I know that I am computer illiterate which is causing me and many others even more frustration. I wanted to create a thread regarding some fish but can not upload the photos.

[Juan Artigas]

smitty,

You can choose pictures from your computer to upload to your posts. Also, although they show as 800 pixels, they can be larger once you click on them. Look for attachments at the bottom of the form when you are editing a post.

Thanks for your post

[smitty]

Thanks for the quick response. I am going to give it a try.

[smitty]

It still is not working. Reason given is that file is too big. It say that site allows maximum 256Kib. My photos are 1.83MB to 1.92MB. How that translate to number of Kib is beyond me.