Newbs

[sparks]

Why are we attracting newbs who want to try and sell us something?

[arthwollipot]

Because Admin hasn't been able to finely tune the filters yet. It's unfortunately an unavoidable consequence of existence - forums will attract spam, unless the goat's entrails are properly prepared under the full moon nearest the equinox.

[Admin]

Not entirely right - a load of them registered before I turned new registrations off and because you can't multi-delete I'm just chopping them as they activate.

No human is involved - it's 100% robot action.

Fucking wankers who program this shit. The online equivalent of graffiti.

[arthwollipot]

And it doesn't serve any purpose. Nobody is dumb enough to click the links, and we're long past the stage where Google simply counted the number of pages that link back to a site to determine its google ranking.

It's pointless and annoying and only makes more work for hard working site admins. If there's anything I can do to help, let me know.

[Admin]

Thanks mate, but it's pretty straightforward, I'm just banning and deleting as they arise.

[stanky]

As the token cave man here, I find this activity to be most bizarre.
Is there even an analogy for it in the non-computer world?

[grayman]

As the token cave man here, I find this activity to be most bizarre.
Is there even an analogy for it in the non-computer world?

Our offices at work still receive the occasional spam-type fax advertising some needless crap.

Do you ever get telemarketing cold-calls stank? Seems like this is along those lines.

Or how about junk mail? That might work as an analogy as well. Seems like I get a lot of stuff through the post office that goes directly into the recycle bin.

[arthwollipot]

As the token cave man here, I find this activity to be most bizarre.
Is there even an analogy for it in the non-computer world?

It's like you're sitting in a cafe having a coffee and a quiet conversation with friends, and people with sandwich boards start trooping in and noisily trying to sell you stuff. The cafe manager can ask them to leave, but there's more of them than there are managers, so it takes a while to get around to them all.

[sparks]

One of the few situations where a loaded gun would prove most efficacious.

[Admin]

Except you'd be shooting at shadows, because it's all done by 'bots.

Worse, it's done by 'bots that have probably been active for years, because nobody would bother targeting forums in the 2020s.