Does anyone know what's happened to Don Mitchell? His contributions to this forum, especially on the subject of Soviet unmanned exploration, were particularly fascinating.

Was he banned, or did he ask to have his account terminated?

Ian.

He asked to have his account closed.

Doug

OK, thanks Doug for the clarification. A great pity he decided to leave.

Ian.

I'll miss his input - but I still can't fathom why anyone would leave UMSF on their own accord...

What baffles me ( and the rest of the admin team ) is why he couldn't just leave without requiring his account to be closed. Very odd, but I have to respect his wishes.

Occasionally, you'll get a "CLOSE MY ACCOUNT" type email from someone who's been given a warning and had a few posts culled for breaking the rules..a toys out of pram situation...but that's fine, that's doing us a favour to be honest

However with Don it was just straight out of the blue. Very strange, but there it is. He was a gold mine especially on the Russian side of things - I'll miss him.

Doug

I guess some people have an addiction and need some support quiting. If you're addicted to a forum, having your account locked would be one way to help you get off it. I'm not saying that DonPMitchell fits into this category, but it's the only thing I can come up with why I would have my account locked on a forum.

(Not really ofcourse, as I don't mind being a hardcore UMSF addict )

Maybe he's being treated for UMSF dependency? Come to think of it maybe I should see a therapist

Seriously, I'll miss him too.

Big loss...

Got to agree there - his departure is a very big loss.

I see paulanderson also shows up as unregistered. Is this a sort of an epidemic?

Paul was banned about a month ago for continually refusing to stick to the rules (a crime in itself) and ignoring repeated requests from the admin team to do so ( a greater crime in UMSF land ).

So Don going and Paul going are two very different things. If you want epidemic, then I can show you the list of banned spamming accounts and IP addresses that ammounts to up to half a dozen per day, every day.

Doug

Oh, I didn't know that. Didn't mean to be nosy, either.


Is that IP mask blocking method panning out to anything or do the spammers still keep pouring in?

They're still pooring in, but we've changed the registration process now so that an admin has to approve every new registration...it's fairly obvious when the registered email addy is 309hsdg@redhotxxx.info or whatever that it's spam and not a genuine member.

It's like a leaking damn - you block up one hole and another one opens....but you still have to go and block it up. There are patterns emerging however, certain higher level IP ranges that are quite obviously a source of much of the registration - so bringing together the list of banned IP slowly adds to the library from which we can draw the most accurate but broadest 'net' to try and bring the problem down.

I've spoken to a few other forum admins and they have the same problem as we do here, and there's nothing that one can do above what is already being done unfortunately.

Doug

Are those spam bots or just loon users? If the former is the case, I wonder if a registration procedure could be devised that forces you to enter one of those graphically scrambled codes that bots can't cope with. If the spammers are people who don't have anything better to do with their life, that's a tough matter. Maybe complicating the registration procedure so much that they'd lose interest would work...

EDIT: Heck, maybe you already have those codes implemented, it's been a while since I registered

"graphically scrambled codes that bots can't cope wit"

Already in place, but the bots have a human element that gets through it.

There are more spammers than forum software writers, so the spammers will always find a way around whatever scheme is in place.

Doug

Yeah i only just found out about captcha farms. Never mind the 'key in the distorted letters' I've always liked site specific captcha engines. e.g. for UMSF you could have an image based "in order to register an account on this website correctly identify these spacecraft" quiz. Realistically, only space enthusiasts can readily identify, MER, Cassini, Galileo, Voyager, Viking etc...

I can see it now - someone who wants to join is confronted by a grizzled old keeper at the registration Bridge of Death who will ask five^H^H^H^H three questions:

Keeper: What is your name?
Keeper: What is your quest?
Keeper: What is the wavelength of the MER Pancam L4 filter?



Of course, the Knights of the Round Table didn't have access to Google...

Don't forget: What is your favourite colour?

I see the scene playing out more like this:

"What is your name?"

"Arthur, King of the Britons!"

"What is your quest?"

"I seek the Holy Grail!"

"What is the resolution of the MER Pancam?"

"What -- before or after onboard binning?"

"I... I don't know that! AAIIIEEEEEEEE!!!!"



-the other Doug

Only at UMSF could thread drift be so wonderfully delicious! Even when the signal to noise ratio wanders a little here, the humor and quality of our "noise" is heads above other boards. I say, "Bravo!"

Don don't know what he's missing .....

For those of you who miss him, Don has a web page...and an interesting blog. Lots of fun stuff there on the Soviet space program (or programme).

http://www.mentallandscape.com/

Hey! That's where I have my e-mail account!

It would end up as Bill Bailey describes going thru customs in Australia

"Have you got any soil on you, and bark or moss, any sticks or stones or pebbles there? Have you ever made a nest amoungst marsh land..."

LOL! You know you are a hardcore UMSF fan when you can answer...

I guess I'm not really on the ball, but I recently realized that I hadn't noticed any posts from Richard Trigaux. Further inspection revealed that he was also unregistered. Any story there? I generally enjoyed reading his posts and will miss his input (even though his last post seems to have been 6 months ago!).

Me too. I've posted this question a couple of times myself with no result. His contributions were excellent but I do remember he was rather dissaproving of some of our less-than-serious discourse.

What members don't see are the posts that get deleted by the admin team. When a member posts something unacceptable in the forum, we usually 'hide' it, discuss the matter as an admin team, and then make a call - usually meaning the post gets deleted and the member told about it.

If the problem reoccurs - we usually give the person one more chance to stop posting things that we consider unacceptable.

Typically - on the third occurance - the account gets deleted as well - by this stage the problem isn't what the member is posting - it's the decision to ignore, twice, the requests of the admin team.

To put it bluntly - our forum, our rules. We'll give you a couple of chances, but if you keep breaking them - you will be shown the door. There comes a point when a contribution - no matter how good - is not worth the time and effort that that member takes from the admin team.

That's what happened with R.T. - You may have enjoyed reading his posts - but there were other posts that he made that were firmly in the tin-foil-hat catagory. We deleted several and asked him to stop posting things of that nature. He refused to stop doing it, despite being warned - so his account was closed on Dec 29th ( after his last post...which you wont find as it's been deleted)

It can often look overly harsh from the outside because regular members don't actually see the stuff that got the guy warned, and then kicked out - because we delete it.

More often than not - I then get a very harshly worded spitefull email insulting me, criticising the forum and claiming that they don't want to visit it anyway.

Such is the joy of looking after UMSF.



Doug

Sorry to hear that, Doug. I for one am very grateful for the difficult (and immense) job you do for the forum and more than willing to accept the consequences, however unfortunate in certain cases. Perhaps to avoid this kind of thread kicking off from time to time might it be a good idea to provide a 'list of the lost' with reasons for departure where known. It's a bit spooky when people you've been talking to just vanish, like characters in a Philip K. Dick novel. And after all, some departures may not have been acrimonious - as UMSF ages we are bound to have members who fall ill, or worse, while others may be trapped outside some cyber-barrier such as Bob suffered last year.

It would also be useful to have some idea where the danger zones are. I'm a bit disconcerted to find that people I found particularly interesting have turned out to have tin foil hats on the side or else Mr Hyde-like alter egos. But don't worry - if I start getting a bit peculiar myself I will heed the very first warning!

Thanks again for this wonderful place.

I can only echo ngunn's sentiments, Doug & the admin group; this is by far my favorite place on the Web, and thanks so much for making it all happen!

Just out of curiosity, how many legit requests to join are you getting now? I've seen a lot of new members recently...seems like the buzz is spreading even faster of late.

This is a truly unique forum. The trouble taken to keep it that way is well worth it. I'm glad it's not MY job though.

No complaints here, Doug. You and the administrators keep this place tip top, and the fact that most of us are unaware that some members are a bit kooky only shows how well you have this place tied down. We the uninformed have the luxury of missing “insightful contributor X” after he/she has been dismissed, but unchecked kooks can drive others away and UMSF is too nice of a forum for that. I support your policy and decision.