New Forum and The Fate of the Old

[WAS]

So I am not sure why the security questions can't be activated to stop the spam from being able to register but maybe we could move forward with just a new forum software. I know there aren't as many migrating scripts these days to make that super easy. If that's the case maybe just install new forum software and move this forum to another dir and disable registration and leave it as a archive of info. That way the community can still move on without all this spam.

I have been using a sandbox browser to check all these links just to be sure nothing is too dangerous beyond the usual phishing and tracking cookies, which luckily so far there hasn't been unless people have downloaded software from some of the links in the past. I am constantly paranoid someone might get infected, and I know people here have registrations and keys to high profile software and stuff thats commonly scraped, let alone financial and identity info. It's scary here for people that may not know any better.

What's scary is a lot of these websites are fresh too, like so fresh virus total and others don't even have info on some of them and have to rely on what it sees only.

[Dune]

I think it may be unwise to have a second (new) forum next to this one, because an archive is easily overlooked or forgotten for info. There's a lot to be found here and if you are on the new forum and need to look something up, you'd have to open another tab. Not a major problem, but still.
But I appreciate your concerns, I'd like to keep us spamfree and safe here. Perhaps it should only be made possible to post for people who have actually downloaded/purchased a version of TG, so they're double-registered. Just my 2 cents.
Or perhaps any link should have a specific and obvious warning, though I wouldn't know what and if that could be done.

[KlausK]

So I am not sure why the security questions can't be activated to stop the spam from being able to register but maybe...

someone of the people owning and mainting this forum should just do exactely that! Or simply let us know why it is not possible to do so.

I`d really love to get this discussion done with. Seems long overdue - but maybe it`s just not on the ToDo list.
On the other hand I`m under the impression that these Spam attacks come in waves. Right now it rather quiet on that front, don`t you think?

A second new forum will sooner or later lead to the old one with all its information of - what - 20 years or something(?) fade and disappear.
Only hardcore users will jump between forums. And right now there are very few hardcore users left here. New users won`t bother, I think.
Saying "go to the old archives, you`ll find the answer there" will surely be not encouraging to new users. And if you really wanted to help out someone you`d be the one
who would have to search in the old forum to get a full link to your advice. How often would you want to do that?

Last but not least: "Don`t take sweets from a stranger, child!"
Don`t click on every f@#$%^&*g link Some of My2cents.

CHeers, Klaus

[WAS]

I have seen a lot of professional companies do just this without much issue. EA did it with their old forum, which I believe was even SMF like here. Especially when most data is found online and not the forums directly. Using search here is really not very helpful. Google is though.

I am noticing there isn't any updated migration scripts to move this version of SMF to modern forum software, meaning there may be no saving this forum without doing an archive or writing your own script to do it exactly and securely. These days not as easy as just porting over when they do their own secure passwords and hashing methods, split content up differently, etc. You have to know both forum software pretty well. Often with different types of passwords you gotta make temp accounts and than another script to send emails to every user to set a new password on the new forum.

I've worked in security for a long time, and have been doing web development since I was literally 9. I click the links to make sure they are not going to ruin somebody. A lot of people don't get the web or what is even safe or not safe. Especially when websites are literally designed to fool the average user. Additionally if it's really bad I will email to try and have it removed right away, if not contact the data center to even suspend planetside (sorry) if it puts people at immediate risk. That sounds harsh but better to have time to fix the thing than indexed poorly and not be able to really fight it. It very hard to get a website ranked as a threat back on top.