Shortcut to profiles

10 Apr '06 5:28 am

Am I being dumn or is there no way one can see a list of profiles? Does one have to go via a post? Am I the only one who would like to know more about the people in Moosey's garden - and come-on folks: why tell us so little about yourselves? Most profiles are woefully incomplete!

10 Apr '06 7:05 pm

I think a shortcut is a great idea.
Took me a while to figure out how to see them as well.
Great Idea Jack. Very Happy

13 Apr '06 8:29 am

Thanks for your suggestions. Warning : This is a long-winded post about memberlists and profiles and has nothing to do with gardening!

When the forums were only a few months old we had a 'members list' option. After noticing some suspicious behaviour I ran a test and setup a user with a brand new email address : 'daffodils@mooseyscountrygarden.com' that had never been used before. I didn't publish this address anywhere. Within 3 weeks I'd received a spam email.

Someone was 'cherry picking' the moosey forums for email addresses to send spam to. After another month the forums started attracting attention from URL spammers - people who would register multiple times and fill the forums with ads for products, services and adult content.

So... I stopped the email addresses and homepage URLS from being displayed and removed the profile links to discourage the spammers and so far, cross fingers, it seems to have worked albeit at the expense of membership lists and profiles Sad

Now I'm thinking a compromise is called for - how about...

1. I add profile links to the author of each post. These will only be displayed when you are LOGGED IN. Guests who are browsing the forums without logging in won't see the profiles. The search engines wont see the profile links either.

Throughout the forums I need to restrict the display of your email addresses and website URLS.

2. I'll make your profile homepages visible only to logged in users. If the search engines can't see homepage URLS this should deter spammers from signing up. Email addresses are going to be a bit trickier - If I allow guests to see your email addresses you WILL receive spam.

If I allow all members to see other members email addresses the spammers will register, login, then 'cherry pick' all of your email addresses, then send you rubbish emails.

I need a way of separating the spammers from legitimate moosey forum members. Sooo...

3. I could allow users who had posted say... 20 or more posts to see the email addresses. When someone starts spamming I disable their account before it gets to 20 posts anyway.

This is a little elitist but it would open up the forums without attracting unwanted attention. Thoughts anyone?

14 Apr '06 7:38 am

Before I look at your very logical analysis, Eggy: I was thinking only of paging through the existing profiles one can find one-by-one by going through the posts, not additional info. (At the same time I feel like I have verbal diarrhoea when I compare myself to most people's very non-commital profiles.)

I quite agree that I do not wish my email to be displayed; you have a 'contact direct' function which is not activated - or is it because I work through a school network where certain options are blocked as part of our 'vigilance'. It would be nice to contact people directly, but that would most likely require a complex filtering system and extra work for the web administrator?? (must admit, I'm in the dark on most technical aspects!)

About your compromise suggestions
1) Am I missing something? Surely this is the way it already works Confused

Ditto 2)
3) This is an interesting compromise (Is Eggy a Justice of the Peace Smile

) It makes sense - however: do we actually WANT to lose the public nature of our correspondence - or, conversely, do we want to encourage private one-on-ones Question

I for one would like people to eavesdrop on the worthwhile - that is how one builds new contacts and meets interesting new people. On the other hand (I'm a Libra) ideally you meet people with whom you wish to persue certain more technical discussions and even info that could just clog up the webpage - so the twenty-post-option is an interesting one.

Lets hear what folks say!

15 Apr '06 7:43 am

A personal message system is the easiest way to go.
Send a pm to the person you wish to contact via a profile linked to your account when logged in, you can then exchange email addys if you wish Cool

This shouldn't allow spammers access to anyones email...should it Eggy?

What a fantastic day to garden! Bright sunshine and still air, none of the forcast rain....yet Cool

16 Apr '06 5:45 pm

Spam is like pollution - it often has a darker side. I'd hate the Moosey 'family' to get horribly spammed, if it can be avoided. I'd feel responsible!

16 Apr '06 7:11 pm

Eggy Im afraid you have left me quite confused.
I thought that at the moment you could only see profiles if you were signed on and that there was a choice whether your email address could be seen or not. When I said Id like to see a shortcut to profiles it was simply to find out more about members, email addresses didnt really come into it.

17 Apr '06 7:56 am

Goose,

I do go on a bit sometimes Smile

If you choose not to display your email then it won't be displayed at all, to anyone, under any circumstances.

What I am proposing is that only members who have posted a certain number of times get to see the email addresses of other members who have the email display option on.

I disabled the personal message system after repeated abuse.

12 May '06 9:19 am

hi there jan's back when i first joined moosey's forum my user was janabay, but i found this to long then i changed it, and went janbay as my name is janet bayldon Confused

then i made the mistake of clicking on to the google bar down the right hand side of the web site ,make money at home !!! then it started , i got all this rubbish from overseas that we could not qualify to use or had to be a u.s. resident i had literaly hundreds of these emails coming thru so i changed my user name, to ???? now i don't get any.

Shortcut to profiles

Shortcut to profiles

Shortcut to profiles

member profiles and email addresses.

Serious stuff

Spam

Shortcut or spam

email display

spam from forum