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Public area => The Pub => Plugins => Topic started by: Arantor on November 2nd, 2011, 04:08 PM

Title: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 2nd, 2011, 04:08 PM
Right, I've been asked (here privately, and elsewhere) about a few plugins that apparently Wedge 'must have', and instead of answering the requests individually, I thought I'd collect them here.

NOTE: I am not preventing anyone from writing them. Just that I will not write them for Wedge and no amount of bribery or anything else for that matter will convince me.


Hide mod

This is apparently one of the most 'important' mods. The notion that hiding some content away from users until they post is a good way to get their attention and get them posting.

Yes, it generates posts. It generates stupid one line posts where people make the post solely to see the content, and invariably don't even bother replying afterwards to *actually* contribute something meaningful. You turn the problem of lack of participation into a problem of crap participation. I'm not going to condone or encourage it.

Look but no read

This is to allow guests to see into a board and see the names of topics but not let them into the topics themselves. Apparently this is a good incentive. Oh, it's an incentive alright, to discourage search engines from visiting your site - if a search engine visits, they're only going to see what guests see. And if you fudge it for search engines, apart from the fact you just gave users a reason not to sign up, search engines have been known to send out requests that don't identify themselves as search engines, and if the content is different, you can be penalised.

Stop Forum Spam

Although it's gotten better in recent times, it's still somewhat unreliable as far as submitting data goes, and it's still too easy to get unvalidated "I just thought it was a spammer" entries in there. There are better methods of keeping spammers out, it just requires a little more effort on the admin's part (like spending 30 seconds writing a question and answer)

WordPress bridge

Seriously, why would we do this? We have blog support built in...


There may be more, but that's it for now at least.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Antes on November 2nd, 2011, 04:50 PM
Yes, you are right about all above but lets think that way i'm blogging in my site nearly 2 years, and i'm waiting wedge beta to move from vBulletin. Not saying "hey you must do WP-Bridge" but i'm saying is you can't just say people to we got our blog system throw your past with WP (and hits etc...)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 2nd, 2011, 05:12 PM
Then someone else can develop a bridge for it, because I see no reason to do so, which is exactly what I've stated. I have no need of a bridge and thus no incentive to write one.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Dragooon on November 2nd, 2011, 05:30 PM
I see that you are not against a pizza plugin, I'd make one but I got stuck at the cheese part.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 2nd, 2011, 05:32 PM
I regularly plug pizza in, I'm good :)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 2nd, 2011, 08:40 PM
I'm sure TE will like the challenge of writing a WP importer (not bridge) if Pete doesn't do it first ;)

As for look boards, I was thinking we could show topic lists without them being linked to the topic. Just like we are doing with profile urls.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 2nd, 2011, 09:03 PM
A WP importer, yes, but no bridge from me.

As far as topics go... There is no good reason for it. It puts people off registering, because it puts a hurdle in to see the content, and invariably the same content or at least comparable content is available elsewhere.

Plus it makes it harder for users to find the content in the first place, which will undo every ounce of SEO that could possibly be done.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 3rd, 2011, 12:05 AM
I don't know, I just don't feel like 'look board' is a horrible thing to implement. It's something I could have used at some point a few years ago, so it doesn't strike me as bad really. Then again, I'm not exactly in a hurry to implement it, either. Maybe something for Wedge 2.0 if we find a good way to implement it...
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 3rd, 2011, 12:13 AM
Quote
I don't know, I just don't feel like 'look board' is a horrible thing to implement.
It's not that it's horrible to implement, because it isn't. It's horrible because it's flawed, it undermines everything about encouraging people to participate. It's the stick as compared to the carrot, and anyone who joins and posts because of the stick is not likely to either hang around or be a good contributor while they're there.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: TE on November 3rd, 2011, 08:56 PM
Quote from Nao on November 2nd, 2011, 08:40 PM
I'm sure TE will like the challenge of writing a WP importer (not bridge) if Pete doesn't do it first ;)
Wordpress?  :whistle: ....
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 3rd, 2011, 08:58 PM
How long did it take you? ;)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: TE on November 3rd, 2011, 09:00 PM
Quote from Nao on November 3rd, 2011, 08:58 PM
How long did it take you? ;)
aprox. 1 hour  :lol: Can you beat me?
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 3rd, 2011, 09:16 PM
I spent about that long doing a crude HTML to bbcode converter and post inserter script ;) I know that it helps that the phpBB password importer is the same as WP's ;)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: TE on November 3rd, 2011, 09:28 PM
to be fair, I've only ported my old WP to SMF converter in one hour to match the new importer structure, the initial developement (checking out the table structure, writing the script etc) took me IIRC five or six hours at all (don't know exactly).
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 4th, 2011, 05:30 PM
In one hour I barely have time to write a couple of lines of JavaScript... :whistle:

(Heck, I'm currently cursing at myself for not being able to make a decision. Opera doesn't like the back/forward buttons when I'm visiting Wedge in a small window -- it tends not to trigger the resize event when navigating this way. If I move the code to below the jQuery init code, it starts working normally. But it also means that the pages, when reloading, spend a tenth of a second with a full sidebar, and only then does the sidebar go away. In the current SVN, you don't get to see the stray sidebar at all. Meh.)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Dismal Shadow on November 4th, 2011, 05:32 PM
People still use Opera? Oh yeah you do. :P
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 4th, 2011, 07:17 PM
I currently have 557 tabs open in Opera... (Have a nifty little plugin indicating that in the corner.)
They're all actually opened and actually accessible within a second by clicking them in the tab list. (I usually press F4 to open a vertical panel with a complete list tree and find them easily. Oh, and of course if I'm not sure where my tab is, I can just type a part of the URL or page name in the quick search box and it'll immediately filter the results...)

So, yeah, I can "deal" with micro-issues like this one... :lol:
Especially since the latest 12.00 alpha fixes most of said micro-issues.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Dismal Shadow on November 4th, 2011, 07:36 PM
Geez, 557? Seriously? Surely ya jest...

That is overkill, I usually have around 10-20 at the time...
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 4th, 2011, 10:56 PM
I try to keep opened all of my unreplied pages for Pete on wedge.org... But even that makes for about 50 tabs at most.
I probably have around 100 tabs of web designs that inspire me.
Dozens of tabs on help with video games, programming, movie descriptions, Wikipedia stuff I haven't finished reading, etc...
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 4th, 2011, 11:02 PM
Nao makes me look so tame; it's unusual if I have even 10 tabs open at once.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 4th, 2011, 11:59 PM
To each their own way of working... ;)

I also have ~200 tabs opened in Firefox these days, and about 50 in Chrome. (The latter because they recently disabled their tab sidebar. Sucks. Now I can't have more than 30 tabs without being fucking lost. Thank you Google...)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: and on November 5th, 2011, 01:24 AM
 :wow: 557? +200?+50  :hmm:

пиздец........... :ph34r:
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 5th, 2011, 01:39 AM
Yeah, Nao's hardcore like that :D
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 5th, 2011, 09:26 AM
Well... After spending years on a 2GB computer that could crawl for hours until I got my 200 tabs loaded in Opera, I'm spoiled! I've never had any memory issues *again*. I'll probably be reaching a thousand tabs by next year :P
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: and on November 5th, 2011, 12:48 PM
Quote from Nao on November 5th, 2011, 09:26 AM
I'll probably be reaching a thousand tabs by next year :P
:wow:

it is worth considering and may write an extension to the browser
that organizes your tabs as you want?
just to keep 500 + tabs open
for me it's like to re-open a page from bookmarks

and lately I almost never use bookmarks
I find the right through a google search and discover :whistle:
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 5th, 2011, 01:25 PM
Quote from and on November 5th, 2011, 12:48 PM
for me it's like to re-open a page from bookmarks
Yeah... And I barely use bookmarks. Not because they're not my thing -- but because using tabs is more convenient.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: and on November 5th, 2011, 01:39 PM
more often than the tabs, I use Speed ​​Dial panel
it is always in sight, and the latest versions of the opera was brought to her mind, making it more user-friendly

and to keep open as many tabs - my computer will not pull as much

surprising as you navigate all of these tabs?
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 5th, 2011, 01:47 PM
Opera invented speed dial. And pretty much invented tabs. Their mdi model (as opposed to sdi) makes more sense to a Windows user. Click a tab to minimize it. It will switch to the last used tab. Click that tab. Other browsers foolishly switch back to the previous one. Opera switches to the  second to last used tab, etc. It just makes SENSE for power users. So I'll just press 4 indefinitely until I reach a recently browsed tab I'm looking for. I can also use 1 and 2 to switch between tabs on tab bar order. Navigating 500 tabs in Opera is easy. I wouldn't do it for anything in the world in another browser. Firefox has some addons that help a bit but it's still not as comfortable.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: and on November 5th, 2011, 01:55 PM
the only thing I lack the opera, it's the same grouping tabs by domain, as in chromium
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Zootalaws on November 5th, 2011, 05:08 PM
You MUST HAVE an MS plugin. You can make it do some innocuous task and lie about how long it is going to take but mke it look busy with an interminable spinning egg-timer, while chewing through CPU cycles.

And you can fill it with bugs - not ones that do anything, but mis-spell words and have a cool feature that has all the names of your favourite swimsuit models appear if you press a certain key-combination.... oh wait, that's Adobe, right?
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 5th, 2011, 05:12 PM
Actually, while I appreciate your post is written in jest, there is a perfectly valid plugin for SMF (I know, I wrote it) that actually does some of those things, and other similar things (and it wouldn't be hard to do something like it but better in Wedge)

Imagine you have a pain user you want rid of.[1] For them, make it seem slow, disable certain features but pretend it's because the site's busy and can't handle the load. But only for them. Eventually they will take the hint.
 1. Or someone you want to prank, as was seen a couple of years ago.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: and on November 5th, 2011, 05:55 PM
Annoy User, mention it here recently
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 5th, 2011, 05:58 PM
Yup, that's exactly it.

I've long thought about integrating some form of that into Wedge, too.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: and on November 5th, 2011, 07:55 PM
if it is - it's good

a similar function xenforo built from the outset
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: spoogs on November 6th, 2011, 04:57 PM
Quote from Arantor on November 2nd, 2011, 04:08 PM
Hide mod

This is apparently one of the most 'important' mods. The notion that hiding some content away from users until they post is a good way to get their attention and get them posting.

Yes, it generates posts. It generates stupid one line posts where people make the post solely to see the content, and invariably don't even bother replying afterwards to *actually* contribute something meaningful. You turn the problem of lack of participation into a problem of crap participation. I'm not going to condone or encourage it.
I won't argue with the logic here though I've been wondering lately if I'd have use for it. It would be a rather specific case and opposed to hiding the certain contents of certain posts  I would hide all but the first post. My scenario is is that we post daily links from a game and each person can choose what they want from each persons list however I find that while everyone is willing to select what they want from the posted links not everyone is actually posting their links for others to choose from. So what I've always wanted to do is post the daily links thread where only the the first post is shown and you have to reply with your links for the day to view all the replies (if someone chose to post nonsense just to access everyone else's links we could easily remedy that and eventually just block them from viewing the list at all). But I still agree this isnt a must have thing.
Quote from Arantor on November 2nd, 2011, 04:08 PM
Look but no read

This is to allow guests to see into a board and see the names of topics but not let them into the topics themselves. Apparently this is a good incentive. Oh, it's an incentive alright, to discourage search engines from visiting your site - if a search engine visits, they're only going to see what guests see. And if you fudge it for search engines, apart from the fact you just gave users a reason not to sign up, search engines have been known to send out requests that don't identify themselves as search engines, and if the content is different, you can be penalised.
Never used this mod so I'm just going to assume it's rather close to what View/Enter Permissions does which I find extremely useful however my setup isn't aimed guests but rather the existing members. We display all available boards and control who enters which.

Can't really say much about the other 2 either... just felt like throwing my 2 bits in :P
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 6th, 2011, 05:16 PM
Quote
It would be a rather specific case
In which case it's not a good fit, or to use the terminology from InI[1], you're still solving the wrong problem. What would really suit is a facility whereby only the first post is shown until a suitable link has been posted, rather than something that allowed generic access (however limited) to the topic at hand. I probably wouldn't even show it as a topic to start with, but just the opening post on its own page, and a single line box to put the URL in (plus any other information needed)

I am curious as to what links these are...
Quote
Never used this mod so I'm just going to assume it's rather close to what View/Enter Permissions does which I find extremely useful however my setup isn't aimed guests but rather the existing members.
Sort of. Whereas V/E P lets a board be visible on the board index but disallow access or visibility (which means you can have hidden but accessible, or visible but inaccessible boards)[2] this mod will let you see the list of topics in a board but not access the actual topics themselves.

The idea is that it is used to allow guests to see topics but to encourage them to register in order to see the content. But it hides the content from search engines meaning that unless there's something else to encourage them to visit, they'll never even find it, let alone be incentivised to register.
 1. I really must catch up and write some more posts, just not had time lately.
 2. For example, you could show the existence of premium boards to regular members but disallow them access. More crucially, V/E P also lets you ban people from a given board, e.g. troublemakers.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: spoogs on November 6th, 2011, 05:34 PM
You've hit the nail on the head as what I'd actually desire though it hadn't occurred to me that the links could/should be checked (better than having to manually check each post). The links are generated based on items that can be sent/accepted ad daily gifts, in a bit I'll try to grab a link or 2.

I get it now.. and V/E P does exactly what I want as we do not display the list of topics just that the board exists.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 6th, 2011, 05:39 PM
Quote
You've hit the nail on the head as what I'd actually desire though it hadn't occurred to me that the links could/should be checked (better than having to manually check each post).
To be honest, that's sort of my job when it comes to analysis and design. It isn't about what you think you want but what you actually need, and you'd be surprised how often the two are different. No, I'll rephrase that, you probably won't be surprised how often the two are different, but you would probably be surprised how *vastly* different they usually are.

To put it into context, have a read of http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-Lock-and-Key.aspx - that's the best (worst!) example of what people think they want as compared to what they need.
Quote
The links are generated based on items that can be sent/accepted ad daily gifts, in a bit I'll try to grab a link or 2.
Yeah, I'm just intrigued by exactly how this works, since my reaction above is based on how it's described, but it's likely that I've made more than one assumption in suggesting what I did.
Quote
I get it now.. and V/E P does exactly what I want as we do not display the list of topics just that the board exists.
Yup, and that makes sense. The design was specific for that, so that view and enter were decoupled and that you could grant, not give or deny based on any combination of groups you cared to name. I can easily envisage sites that use any combination of them depending on circumstance, but I have yet to see a site that hides the contents of topics from guests that would actually encourage me to post - because if a search engine doesn't see the content, how do I find that I want that site?

I want to say that you'd be surprised at the people that don't realise this, but I doubt you would actually be surprised by it.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: spoogs on November 6th, 2011, 06:06 PM
Link sent via PM

That was a good read, needless to say I do follow InI and have read the bits about fixing the wrong problems ;)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 6th, 2011, 07:23 PM
I like the idea of View/Enter Board permissions, btw... Probably more than 'view list of topics in boards you can't access'.
Having the board name show up, without a link, and possibly with a hint about how you can't access it... That could be helpful sometimes.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 6th, 2011, 07:41 PM
Quote
I like the idea of View/Enter Board permissions, btw... Probably more than 'view list of topics in boards you can't access'.
Pssst, you know I implemented it already, right? Ages ago I rewrote the old query_see_board to become query_see_only_board (later query_list_board) and it's all stored in the board_groups table ;)

The one downside is that I *still* haven't fixed the UI for it in the admin panel, even though it's like months later, because I still haven't figured out a non-ridiculous way of doing it that I like. (It's certainly going to be an improvement on it being a true and physical permission like my mod was)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 6th, 2011, 10:44 PM
Quote from Arantor on November 6th, 2011, 07:41 PM
Pssst, you know I implemented it already, right?
.....
I'm old. Don't stir up my wounds!
Please, don't tell me you also already implemented the thought system somewhere I didn't notice... :lol:
Quote
Ages ago I rewrote the old query_see_board to become query_see_only_board (later query_list_board) and it's all stored in the board_groups table ;)
Oh yeah, silly me... The very feature that you forgot to write a UI for. Might be related to my not noticing :P

Why not reuse the UI in AeMe BTW...? I think it has enough stuff with regards to setting album privacy.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 6th, 2011, 10:59 PM
Quote
Please, don't tell me you also already implemented the thought system somewhere I didn't notice...
No, I didn't, heh.
Quote
Why not reuse the UI in AeMe BTW...? I think it has enough stuff with regards to setting album privacy.
Because the context is different, and has different settings in regard to what's really needed. Albums let you set read/write per group per album[1] but there's no deny per group.

Even if we, for the moment, transpose read/write as view/enter, we've still got to somehow convert the per-user disable read and per-user disable write into something that works for groups, which means you have three states per view and three per enter (as opposed to two which can be meaningfully represented with a checkbox)

I'm also not sure about setting a password per board, though it is requested often enough on sm.org.

(Also, in an album configuration in Aeva, you can set per-user grant and per-user deny. If you put the same username in both, what happens, out of interest?)
 1. Doesn't cleanly handle inherited groups but I think that entire concept is semi broken anyway.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: DirtRider on November 9th, 2011, 07:21 AM
Quote from Arantor on November 2nd, 2011, 04:08 PM
WordPress bridge

Seriously, why would we do this? We have blog support built in...


There may be more, but that's it for now at least.
You are looking at this from a forum point of view this meaning that the forum is your main site. However I find that a lot of people want a WP web site and a forum attached to that the forum being secondary. Now WP does have a lot of forum plugins but I have found them lacking in a lot of respects so if you could have a menu item in your WP site linking to a wedge forum that would be a plus for these types of web sites
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: live627 on November 9th, 2011, 08:19 AM
What if Wedge aims to have blogs before 1.0 and an importer is being made? Oh, oh, some people want to stick to their beloved WordPress.

Someone might make a bridge, just that Pete says he won't make it.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: DirtRider on November 9th, 2011, 08:41 AM
Funny I have found the blog function in forum software is not used that much by the looks of it
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 9th, 2011, 10:17 AM
Over at noisen.com, it's not used MUCH, but then again the website isn't very well known. I estimate that around 20% of my regular users opened a blog, usually the most regular ones. A good portion of Noisen's posts come from blog posts and comments.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 9th, 2011, 12:19 PM
Yup, I see my point was missed entirely.

First up, I'm not preventing someone else writing such a bridge. I'm merely not going to do it myself, and won't stop anyone else writing one should they choose to do so.

From my POV, there are so many things I find wrong with WP it isn't even funny... you can't even change the permissions in each group without a plugin or hacking the code directly, for example. Not to mention the seemingly never ending stream of updates and fixes they send.

The thing is, what is the physical difference between a forum and a blog? Both have posts, both have replies, an out of the box setup on WP is just a streamlined variation on a single forum board; the difference is almost entirely just presentation with some UI mojo thrown in. Since a lot of the UI mojo and underpinnings either are built or are going to be built in time for 1.0, there's very little reason to actually run two very different pieces of software when all you want is a nice blog and a forum. As a bonus you even get the facility to have a common theme for free. (To me this is more important than having a bridge)

There's no real reason why Wedge shouldn't be considered a viable CMS base for building almost anything you care to name on top of it.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 9th, 2011, 01:06 PM
Although right now Wedge's blog support needs some work -- even if it's just the theme, the message index isn't really 'clean' to me and we'll have to rewrite it to get something like Wedge.org. And posts, err... I don't think topic pages have a blog variation?
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 9th, 2011, 01:16 PM
Quote
I don't think topic pages have a blog variation?
It's on my todo list, and has been for a long time. And yes, the message index isn't clean because I can't decide how it should look :/
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 9th, 2011, 02:12 PM
..like Noisen/Wedge.org? :P

I can deal with it if you want... It would make sense since I'm used to it anyway. Just need to figure out how to 'present' the thing without making a new template just for blogs... (I guess we'll need to add a custom block for them.)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on November 9th, 2011, 03:32 PM
Why shouldn't it be a custom template? I always sort of figured it was, and it is for the message index...
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on November 9th, 2011, 03:44 PM
MessageIndex has a custom block, not a custom template, so that's in line with what I'm looking for in the display template.
However, I'm not a big fan of reproducing the same code across two functions... I think we should do something about it.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: PantsManUK on April 13th, 2012, 12:15 PM
Quote from Arantor on November 2nd, 2011, 04:08 PM
Stop Forum Spam

Although it's gotten better in recent times, it's still somewhat unreliable as far as submitting data goes, and it's still too easy to get unvalidated "I just thought it was a spammer" entries in there. There are better methods of keeping spammers out, it just requires a little more effort on the admin's part (like spending 30 seconds writing a question and answer)
I'm a big fan of SFS, but I'm fully aware that it's not a "fire and forget" solution; as an admin you have to do some work on each and every thing it flags as suspicious (number of times I've manually checked things on the website and found way more spam reported than the SMF plugin indicates... that's my only complaint about the plugin, in fact)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on April 13th, 2012, 12:24 PM
The only problem is that you're still putting a lot of trust in a third party, especially one that has not really had - IMHO - sufficient reason to be trusted in the past.

The reason that you see less from the plugin is that it queries with a certain threshold, rather than completely, and if that service goes down, you're still at risk - as opposed to other measures that protect you all the time for free (namely questions, CAPTCHA, in that order, heh)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: PantsManUK on April 13th, 2012, 12:36 PM
Quote from Arantor on April 13th, 2012, 12:24 PM
The only problem is that you're still putting a lot of trust in a third party, especially one that has not really had - IMHO - sufficient reason to be trusted in the past.

The reason that you see less from the plugin is that it queries with a certain threshold, rather than completely, and if that service goes down, you're still at risk - as opposed to other measures that protect you all the time for free (namely questions, CAPTCHA, in that order, heh)
All true, hence why we also have questions and a CAPTCHA :eheh:

There is no "one-size blocks all" solution to the problem, and I personally don't think there ever will be. Defence in depth is the best we've currently got, cloud-source solutions have a part to play, but more importantly admins need to keep up with the research, because (a) the people that *could* stop the bot-farms and spammers won't (the dodgy ISPs will never change their ways...), and (2) the defence measures are up against very determined attackers.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on April 13th, 2012, 02:20 PM
That's the thing, most other systems do not have defence in depth, and that's part of the problem. Most systems put all the defences on the front line and once that's broken (which is doable via CAPTCHA farms or human registrations being passed to spam farms), you're screwed. Having a non-generic question really helps because right now it conforms to the path of least resistance - you make the site non generic and thus not easily beatable through automated means, and all the time there's someone else out there that is weaker than you, that's what will happen.

Having a question or CAPTCHA on posting is an improvement on just registration but it's no substitute for defence in depth. Now, we have some improvements in that direction, but it's still not magically out of the box (though I have thought about making the first 5 posts being approved for non admins on a new install), but there's no reason why we couldn't have something like an Akismet plugin. (Heck, there's no reason we couldn't set up our own equivalent that's more geared to forums!)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on April 13th, 2012, 03:42 PM
Silly idea. Add a default question called {equation}. this will make Wedge generate on the fly a very simple random equation for users to solve.

Of course that'll also keep out those who never heard of the minus sign... :lol:
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on April 13th, 2012, 03:54 PM
Or negative numbers... what's 5 - 8 again? :lol:

It's not such a silly idea, except for the fact that so-called MATHCHA problems are generally easy for machines to solve (thanks to Google Calculator)
Posted: April 13th, 2012, 03:46 PM

Actually if we were doing that, I'd rather do a plugin that generated it automatically, rather than a core feature.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: live627 on April 14th, 2012, 12:31 AM
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Or negative numbers... what's 5 - 8 again? :lol:
3 :lol:
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on April 14th, 2012, 12:55 AM
Only in the obscure branch of maths known as mysredia.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on April 18th, 2012, 06:00 PM
Quote from Arantor on April 13th, 2012, 03:54 PM
Or negative numbers... what's 5 - 8 again? :lol:
That's why I mentioned that ;)
I don't read AAF, but I have a tab opened on your list of recent posts, so I can try and follow what you're replying to ;)
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It's not such a silly idea, except for the fact that so-called MATHCHA problems are generally easy for machines to solve (thanks to Google Calculator)
Didn't know it even had a name, eheh...
They'd have to know we have a math question at that point though...
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Actually if we were doing that, I'd rather do a plugin that generated it automatically, rather than a core feature.
The whole point of having it core, is precisely that you can then make sure that you're protected from 99% of spam right at install time.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on April 18th, 2012, 07:02 PM
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I don't read AAF, but I have a tab opened on your list of recent posts, so I can try and follow what you're replying to
I reply to most topics. Aside from dispelling a lot of the smug 'XenForo is better' crap, it does give me a decent barometer as to what people are using software for.
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Didn't know it even had a name, eheh...
They'd have to know we have a math question at that point though...
MATHCHA is even more bastardised a name than CAPTCHA is, heh, but yes, that's what it's known as. Figuring out that it's a math question is not that hard, however.
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The whole point of having it core, is precisely that you can then make sure that you're protected from 99% of spam right at install time.
Except that you're not, not nearly 99%. However, I do agree that it might be useful to generate a question like that as an example, I just wouldn't implement it like that (I'd generate it in the install language and install it directly as a question), so that instead of having {equation} show up in the Q&A area, it would show up with the actual question.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on April 19th, 2012, 07:01 PM
Quote from Arantor on April 18th, 2012, 07:02 PM
I reply to most topics. Aside from dispelling a lot of the smug 'XenForo is better' crap, it does give me a decent barometer as to what people are using software for.
I don't know... You know, fanboys! XenForo is 'on the way up'. Google Trends seems to prove that.[1]
Even if we had a gold Wedge by now, I'm sure there would still be XF fanboys claiming that free software just can't compete.
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MATHCHA is even more bastardised a name than CAPTCHA is, heh, but yes, that's what it's known as.
Starting to wonder if the people responsible for these names are Doctor Slump fans... (Ncha! Byecha!)
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Except that you're not, not nearly 99%. However, I do agree that it might be useful to generate a question like that as an example, I just wouldn't implement it like that (I'd generate it in the install language and install it directly as a question), so that instead of having {equation} show up in the Q&A area, it would show up with the actual question.
Sounds good to me.
Then the localized versions could use local 'common sense' questions like 'Quelle est la couleur du cheval blanc d'Henri IV ?' (What's the color of Henry IV's white horse? Famous one here. I think the answer is white, BTW. Uh no, it's blanc. It's a hard question for a US bot to answer, see.)
 1. While vBulletin trends are down, as well as phpBB and even SMF... Only MyBB seems to be up in the free forum world. Hard to say about Wedge though, because it's such as generic word, and although I'd say it's up, we're still lost in a forest of other references ;)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on April 19th, 2012, 07:11 PM
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I don't know... You know, fanboys! XenForo is 'on the way up'. Google Trends seems to prove that.
It is on the way up, I won't argue that. It has done so at a lot of vBulletin's expense, and to a lesser degree phpBB's expense. MyBB is flourishing because it's proving that it is a strong candidate in the free world that is under active development (as neither phpBB nor SMF can really make that claim, and we're not yet published publicly)
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Even if we had a gold Wedge by now, I'm sure there would still be XF fanboys claiming that free software just can't compete.
Of course they would. There are a lot of idiots out there who equate expensive with better, without any real reason for it.
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Starting to wonder if the people responsible for these names are Doctor Slump fans... (Ncha! Byecha!)
Well, CAPTCHA is a backronym for catching spam (i.e. they took 'capture' and figured out an acronym to basically fit) while MATHCHA is basically a portmanteau of math + CAPTCHA.
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Sounds good to me.
Then the localized versions could use local 'common sense' questions like 'Quelle est la couleur du cheval blanc d'Henri IV ?' (What's the color of Henry IV's white horse? Famous one here. I think the answer is white, BTW. Uh no, it's blanc. It's a hard question for a US bot to answer, see.)
That works for me too, though I'd prefer to have something that's semi random too so that you can't just have bots build the library from our installer (i.e. detecting the question and using the answer) Perhaps a math question written out in words - but that would require having support for multiple answers so that people can put in words or numbers and have both be accepted.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on April 26th, 2012, 05:16 PM
I'll leave it up to you to decide what we do about this.

Re: xenForo, what's new on their side BTW...? Didn't they have a lawsuit with vB or something? Did they win? Lose?
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on April 26th, 2012, 06:54 PM
The lawsuit is still ongoing, and it's really been weighing on Kier lately, but I still think they're going to win in the end.

I think I will implement both multiple answers and auto-generated questions to kick off with.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: PantsManUK on April 27th, 2012, 11:49 AM
Would a word-based arithmetic sum be any better Pete ("five minus eight" with the answer expressed as a number)? Combines what I see as being the best bits of both mechanisms... Having said that, it suffers the same drawbacks (simple to mechanically break once it's been taught to OCR the problems) Ignore me. :whistle:
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on April 27th, 2012, 12:23 PM
It would be an improvement over numbers - but no magic bullet. Still, as a default out-of-the-box setup it's quite reasonable.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: WasdMan on March 22nd, 2013, 06:14 PM
If possible, do I have to know to create plugin. Not sure, but I tried.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on March 22nd, 2013, 07:39 PM
If you look around, it's all documented...
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: ziycon on May 7th, 2013, 02:23 PM
Are a Joomla or Drupal bridge off the cards also?
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Nao on May 7th, 2013, 02:53 PM
Depends on them and our license...
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on May 7th, 2013, 03:34 PM
Joomla is militant GPL, anything that bridges must either be fully GPL or be at arms-length like jFusion is.

Though, given what I have planned, there should be little reason to go there anyway.
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: ziycon on May 7th, 2013, 03:44 PM
Quote from Arantor on May 7th, 2013, 03:34 PM
Joomla is militant GPL, anything that bridges must either be fully GPL or be at arms-length like jFusion is.

Though, given what I have planned, there should be little reason to go there anyway.
Sounds interesting, care to elaborate? :)
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: Arantor on May 7th, 2013, 03:45 PM
Not at this time, no :niark:
Title: Re: Plugins I refuse to do
Post by: ziycon on May 7th, 2013, 04:48 PM
Quote from Arantor on May 7th, 2013, 03:45 PM
Not at this time, no :niark:
I kinda expected that answer. :D