Membership

[whole diary]

[johnneyw]

Way hey, 2,000 members, just 3 to go to 2,003! 😀

[grahame]

Way hey, 2,000 members, just 3 to go to 2,003! 😀

Indeed, Johnneyw!

Of the 2,000 applications for membership we have accepted (i.e. members), 1,423 have followed the acceptance by logging in and 998 have posted.  And those numbers compare with our largest local rail use group hovering around the 100 members, with perhaps 30 coming along to each meeting - say 50 different members in the year at meetings, with 50 signed up to receive their newsletter.

I know that very large numbers of people read the forum but don't apply for membership - it could be that they don't want to take what they feel is a big step,  that they feel they've nothing to contribute (but if you are someone not signed up reading this - PLEASE join us), that they are here just to read a specific answer, of that they're lurking GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) managers want to find out what the customers are saying (we know you are here too  ).

In the last 28 days alone, Google Analytics reports 9,877 users.  Now a number of those will be the same user on a second device - but never the less I would be surprised if we had less than 5,000 different people in a month. These users ran 31,213 sessions - average session size just over 6 pages, total pages served to real users - just under 200,000.

Do I trust the Google Stats?  Yes, pretty much.  They're also broken down by country, and we're told that 96.5% of visitors are in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).  0.6% have a "not set" country, 0.5% are in France and all the rest are even smaller.  Were there any significant automata traffic in the Google stats, the country bias would not be so marked.

[bobm]

Just to add - over 160,000 have *tried* to sign up but have been rejected on the basis that their intentions were not entirely honourable.

Just shows what a constant battle it is to keep the forum clean of the rubbish (and filth) which affects so many forums.

[johnneyw]

Just to add - over 160,000 have *tried* to sign up but have been rejected on the basis that their intentions were not entirely honourable.

Just shows what a constant battle it is to keep the forum clean of the rubbish (and filth) which affects so many forums.

Yet I slipped through the net! 😁

[Bmblbzzz]

Just to add - over 160,000 have *tried* to sign up but have been rejected on the basis that their intentions were not entirely honourable.

Just shows what a constant battle it is to keep the forum clean of the rubbish (and filth) which affects so many forums.

Are those figures correct? For every one "honourable" member there are 80 (eighty!) of dubious intentions? I presume this includes everything from bots to people with commercial intent, pornsters, virus spreaders, and plain old disruptive humans; but the numbers are astounding! 

[Fourbee]

I've got an old linux box which I occasionally make visible to the outside world for testing purposes.

I think I once had about 3 probes for known vulnerabilities in 30 minutes; there's certainly a load of ne'er-do-wells out there!

...and now we know it's possible to access protected memory via a vulnerability in some CPUs' pipelining activities. Security is an endless/thankless task.

[bobm]

Just to add - over 160,000 have *tried* to sign up but have been rejected on the basis that their intentions were not entirely honourable.

Just shows what a constant battle it is to keep the forum clean of the rubbish (and filth) which affects so many forums.

Are those figures correct? For every one "honourable" member there are 80 (eighty!) of dubious intentions? I presume this includes everything from bots to people with commercial intent, pornsters, virus spreaders, and plain old disruptive humans; but the numbers are astounding! 

It could actually be more.  Some sign-ups never get as far as being possible members if their IP addresses have been blocked due to past abuse.

Take yesterday as an example.

There were 21 signups which made it past the initial traps for us to consider whether they are bona fide applicants.

It isn't a perfect science - but some came from "throwaway" Russian email addresses - so they can usually be deleted.  One has six full stops in the email address - so that's a no.  Then there are three with just one character changed in the email address... and so on.

We might get down to one or two which could be genuine - and if we are not sure we can send an email asking for confirmation.  A person who wants to join is unlikely to take offence at that.

In the end we had one we considered was ok and they have been approved.   They have yet to post and obviously we will await that event - if it happens.  A surprising number do enrol but continue to lurk and never post - but are welcome all the same.

It is only by doing all that we stop the forum going the way of many others which rapidly fill with spurious messages and questionable content.

It is something the admins take pride in doing and I have to say, by and large, I think we get it right.

[Bmblbzzz]

Blimey! I'm amazed I ever got in here! I'm seriously impressed with the work that (I didn't realize) goes into running even a relatively small forum like this. Well done, and thank you.

[grahame]

Blimey! I'm amazed I ever got in here!

With ease 

We have quite a lot of things we look out for in sign up requests - probably about 10 - and most often just one of two suggest the signup is valid, and the vast majority scream spam.  It's the other way around - 8 or 9 out of 10 things are fine for a genuine signup, with just one to two causing up to raise an eyebrow.   As a graph:



and as you can see, with a good set of well-endowed evaluation techniques, there is going to be a distinct shortage of signups in the middle which are hard to decide.   As Bob suggests, when we get one in the middle we write and ask.