Part I Early this morning September 16th

It seems a bot is aimed at this thread and it just keeps on shooting at it. Most of the thread for the last 5 pages is no longer on topic anyway, so I am going to delete the thread and see if whoever is responsible for the thread takes aim somewhere else or just gives up. We shall see.

Part II September 16th 4:53 p.m.
My apologies to all those who posted legitimately. Hopefully we will get this situation in hand soon.
Meanwhile it would be very helpful if all members of good will, take the time when you can and edit your profile giving as much information as you can e.g. full-name,password, verifiable e-mail address, location, birth date and most importantly, if you could change your user name to one of 10 characters or less. All this information is private and safe. This is a voluntary aid against spam.
Sorry for the trouble but it would help us with the spam problem we are having. Soon other features will be put in place to help to ease this pernicious problem.

Part III September 16, 5:40 p.m.
Since I deleted the thread and many have been editing their profiles, there has been only one spam. All of these spams are harmless but they are irritating, often crude and take up bandwidth better used by our members interested in knives, sharpening and the Wicked Edge.
The user names used by the bot which has intruded here are long and complex in nature so you will recognize them when you see them, here is an example I made up 'coccyxpedogococcyx' Smile when you see them...they are silly, irritating and intrusive but they are a joke...not of the funny kind!
Thanks to all who have responded with encouragement to me and our IT guy Dany!

Part IV, September 17, 8:12 a.m.
There have been no more spam posts to this hour, although spam registrations continue to turn up. These will be stopped as soon as we install the new method of registration. For now we are manually rendering the spam registrations invalid and useless for intruding on our forum.
Thanks everybody for your patience and co-operation.

Part V,10:29 a.m.
All is well! Fingers crossed.


Part VI, September 17, 4:30 p.m.

We almost have the spam problem in hand. One further help our members can help with...do not respond to the spam even out of curiosity. Spam cannot hurt but responding can get you into trouble if there is a phishing site. Do not respond for a lark. Spam dies when no one pays attention to their content.
Thanks again.

Part VII, September 18,9:01 a.m.
We may have the spam problem pretty well licked. Thanks everybody who has helped so far. To deal a final blow now, it would really help if everyone who has the time and inclination could edit their profiles if you haven't already done so,and fill in as much info as you feel you can. If you can change your user name to one of 10 characters or less,that would be very helpful. But if you feel uncomfortable doing that don't worry,we don't want our members to have to fret. When the new rules come into play, the new members will be required to do so and you will not.
Have a great Sunday and please feel free to join into the discussions or post your experiences and ideas. That is what the forum is all about. May your WEPS packages arrive soonest.

Cheers
Leo



Best to all
Leo

leomitch wrote:


Leo,

I started this thread. NUKE IT!

Doug

Thanks for your understanding Doug! It has now been done! It has now been down for almost three hours and there has been no new post by the bot! Hope springs eternal eh!

Best regards
Leo

Well, another couple hours and still no sign... I think 'ya might have nailed it, Leo!

Yes, but now that there is no spam, what are we going to talk about? Oh yeah! Now I remember! We were talking about minimum angles for sharpening. I'm hoping for more info on the new low angle adapter (or whatever it will be called). Due out in November (we hope). I can’t wait.

Doug

Dang, you're right! Curses!

So far I've tried down to 15 degrees, haven't had a knife worth going below that to try on it yet, probably won't use it on any of my decent blades until I can get some finer finishing stones. It's sure doing an awesome number on our steak knives, anyway. A toothy edge works well on those, and given that their purpose is to be sawed into a ceramic plate by some steakhouse samurai, I'm not all that worried about edge retention. I've got a couple of nice ones that I'm going to give it a whirl on once I can pick up those Shaptons, and the finer plates get here, though. Those have steel that could benefit from a lower angle.

leomitch wrote:
I changed my username, provided my SSAN, bank account number and password as requested. The account in the Cayman Islands will take a bit longer...

Please include your official signature as used on your cheques! LOL!

Leo

Just so everyone knows, slowly but surely we are conquering the spam problem...it is more difficult than one thinks at first. So far the spam messages have been stopped in the forum proper but there is still the problem of invalid, spammed registrations. We are trying to fix this so it affects them but not the valid registrations, meanwhile I keep on doing the deed manually and it works, if inefficiently. You will see a spammed profile turn up every once in awhile in Whose Online but it is soon gone and anyway they are harmless, they just take up bandwidth.
Thanks once again for your patience and please take a few minutes to fill in all the info you can in your profile,every little bit helps! If you can see your way to making a new user name of 10 syllables or less, this would also be helpful but it is not vital for present registrants.

Best regards
Leo

Looks like it's been working, Leo, I haven't seen one on the boards myself now for a couple days. Good work!