Please, please, please will RSPB Mods block these repetitive spammers & remove their rubbish from this Community Forum!

Good afternoon everyone,

Just a quick update on the spamming activity.

We have removed the spam content and users accounts. The only way we can prevent this type of activity would be by putting a pre-approval on all new members as we did before, but currently, this would put a significant delay on legitimate new registrations, so we will continue to monitor the threads and respond should we see any unwanted activity.

We are not able to monitor the community continuously, so there may well be a delay in taking action, but we will take action as soon as we can.

Apologies for any inconvenience this has caused you.

Many thanks for your continued patience.

Elliott.

The only way which will make it harder for the spammers to get access to these forums and I have said this many timee before and it may sound harsh and I doubt the RSPB would take this up, but that is the RSPB Community Forums should be exclusively for paid up RSPB members and to access these forums your password or rather your pin number which would be your RSPB membership number and if any RSPB member posted spam the RSPB staff or moderators would know where you lived and could deal with any problem more profusely. Thats the only way the RSPB can deal with this problem with there limlted resources. It may sound very harsh, but in my opinion it’s the only way that the RSPB can deal with this problem and it is a major problem and a security problem.

Thanks a lot Thomo!

I’m a member of another forum, completely different to the RSPB Forum of another organisation which has far less paid up members than the RSPB, but you have to be a paid up member of that organisation to be a member of that forum and the forum is doing well, with lots of the paid up members posting on that Forum.

If no one agrees with what I’ve said and the RSPB will not most likely have any forum members as Mods and I’m very concerned about the security around this forum with all this spam and I’m not technical if anything happened on my iPad that didn’t make me feel safe on these forums and it’s the only way which would make me feel safe posting here and also the RSPB have limited funds for moderation. So my question to others! What would you do on these forums do make it much safer to use, security wise on these forums, if you,don’t agree with my proposal that this forum should be for paid up RSPB members only. Again im sorry if I sound harsh. But I’m afraid I have to come to some sort of reality and I know there will be lots of you not happy about this.

Well as I mention I’m on another forum that only allows paid up members of that organisation with far less members and that forum is very successful with lots of threads and posts and I don't have any doubt that the RSPB Forum would survive as a paid up exclusive RSPB members forum. As at the moment I don’t feel safe at times posting on here, security wise. I know it would be unpopular to some if this happened. But the RSPB is a charity and is not the most expensive charity to join in the UK. It’s not in consevation for entertainment and for these little extras such as posting on this forum, you should be a paid up RSPB member.

I should point out that I'm a fully paid up member of the french equivalent to the RSPB. I also pay out a lot of money in fuel, plus give my time, to voluntary work for them. I also buy goods on line from the RSPB & donate money when I do, but I'm not a member of the RSPB & don't want to be. I don't want any more commitements thankyou.
I used to come here all the time, but now it's only to catch up with friends that I do so. I think the pains with the photo posting have lost a lot of members & frankly if the numbers drop much lower it won't be viable, as newcomers won't have anyone left to help them out with their questions.
They just need to listen to members, sort out the response to spam button & the other niggles, or it will die & then the RSPB will get more phone-calls from worried members of the public who can't get an answer to their wildlife problems on here.

Robbo said:
"osprey chat or overseas postings, both of which flood worthwhile, interesting posts or questions out"

Your comment suggests that the osprey chat is not "worthwhile" nor "interesting", I don't know if that was intentional but I would argue that the osprey chat is no more or no less worthwhile and interesting than any other chat.

Hoping not to get on my high horse, Ian

Regarding additional security, I post to a site with Disqus which has the Captcha "I am not a robot" check. It can be a pain at times but is designed to weed out bots. I think it has been mentioned either on this thread or others as a possible measure. I have no idea what this would cost to implement & run. Ian