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00581: Re: News and changes on the WDDM site

From: "S'ace" <cjdegroot(at)wanadoo.nl>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 12:15:43 +0200
Subject: Re: News and changes on the WDDM site

a hell of a job ... MASTER!
;-)
at your service at any call a-dresses

s'ace

----- Original Message -----
From: "WDDM webmaster" <wbm@world-wide-democracy.net>
To: <wddm@world-wide-democracy.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 25, 2006 12:06 PM
Subject: News and changes on the WDDM site


Hello everybody!

First: We have a new member: Martin Jackson of Australia. Welcome!

I apologize that I have not yet been able to formally make some
conclusions from the December poll. But some of them are being implemented
...

The situation with the recent spam attacks is finally under control. It
was so called referrer spam (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referer_spam) mostly from online poker sites,
online pharmacies, credit card and other online financial sites, insurance
sites, who want to increase traffic to their sites by putting links
wherever they can (in posts to wikis, etc.). They use lots of similar
domain names and one bans some of them, they are coming in other
reincarnations. This is all done apparently by means of automated programs
that are trying to fill in every form on the web they can find with their
ads. Including the e-mail messages they were sending you from the WDDM
site. I have collected over 3000 of these domains names that are now
banned from the site:
http://www.world-wide-democracy.net/Wiki/WddmWikiMain/review_blacklist
They are still trying every day, but there has not been any successful
attempt to use the mail forms on the site for some time.
In the process of cleaning the Wiki site from their comments, I have
changed permission on all wiki pages to disallow any non-members to post
comments there.

New development: Big thanks to Lee Gottlieb who made a new graphical
design for the WDDM site and suggested a new forum software. I have
finally implemented all this on the site, and tried to integrate it all
with the old Wiki as best as possible. There are still some things to be
done but everything seems to be working well now, and you are welcome to
have a look and try the new forum, and make suggestions what can still be
improved or changed.

I have copied your old accounts from the Wiki to the new forum. So you
can just login into the forum without the need for a new registration,
using your old Wiki names and passwords. I suggest that you first go into
the "My Control Center" and do all kinds of setting there. Registered
forum users (that is the right now the current WDDM members) can post
without any moderation in all the discussions (forums). The posts from
unregistered users are allowed in some general forums, but are hidden
until approved by a moderator. To prevent those automatic spamming
programs to make a large number of nuisance posts, I have put in a place a
visual verification step (copying a possibly blurred text from a randomly
generated image that only a human can do).
There is also such a step during the registration of the new forum
users. There are two more steps required - verification by e-mail (of the
registrant e-mail address) and finally by a moderator. Is that too much
trouble? Given the spam problem and the fact that after a successful
registration the new user can post and participate at the site without any
further restrictions, it does not seem to me personally too much. What do
you think?

I have copied all the relevant posts from the old forum in Wiki to the
new forum - into several "internal" forums that are limited to the WDDM
members only - you will see them only after you log in into the new Forum.
(All these old posts are from December of 2005 made by Bruce - he as the
author can further edit them after he logs in - if he wanted). After that
I have removed the old forum from Wiki.

It remains to unify completely the Wiki and the new Forum, so that there
is a single unified database of users for both packages. SO that for
example any change of the password in one of them is immediately
recognized also in the other. This is not the case yet.
I am not planning to remove Wiki completely as it still contains a lot
of information, and it will be useful also in the future for some tasks.

Also I'll add to the forum a poll module very soon. This will enable us
to do any voting that may be necessary.

I am looking forward for you further suggestions and problem reports,
etc.

Mirek


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