Hey, everyone:
As the primary person responsible for our forum, I thought I should offer some additional details for clarity. Sal was very kind in giving me some privacy, but I'm willing to share. I was out of the office for a few weeks because my Mom passed away. In all honesty, her health had been rapidly declining for the past several months so I've been in and out of the office quite a bit. Most people are aware that I'm usually online or at least available to be online unless I'm asleep or on a plane
)) but this was different for obvious reasons.
I'm working through close to just over 700 e-mails (not all, of course, are related to the forum) and I'll be getting these issues resolved today. It's possible that the accounts mentioned were not actually banned, but the accounts were shifted into a group that is heavily restricted due to a high number of bounced e-mails - like most forums, we ask that our members provide and maintain a valid e-mail address. Once we have a valid e-mail address, it's easy to reactivate the account.
@Pjake,
@dalefuller - this is the case with your accounts - your e-mail addresses weren't valid. I just updated your e-mails to the address that each of you e-mailed me from and moved you out of the bounced e-mail group.
A
amateur blacksmith
- looks like there was a typo in your username and e-mail address. I've fixed both - your name now matches your name here.
We do moderate new members for a period of time. We utilize several different tools to help us keep the forum safe, and as free of spam as possible. Once upon a time, 99% of spam was generated by bots, but that's not the case now. There are actual people sitting in large rooms filled with computers doing nothing but attempting to disrupt different sites - kind of like the telemarketer phone banks only it's not the dinner-hour that they're trying to ruin. Spammers now copy and paste legitimate posts - some from recent activity and others have gone back more than 10 years - this gives them a better shot at getting through filters. To put some numbers behind this information, our software has blocked more than 23,000 known spam traffickers in just the past 12 hours. On average, it blocks 40-50,000 attempts on our forum every day. Most of these are bots, but there's just enough of them that aren't bots (that can answer questions, math problems, reCAPTCHA, etc.) that make post moderation a requirement to keep the forum safe/clean. We typically approve posts throughout the day, but there can be delays in the evenings, on weekends, and in special circumstances.
Finally, for BigWillie. He was removed for violating rules of our forum. We don't allow harassment or threats.
I hope this clears things up for everyone. If I didn't mention you above, but you sent me an e-mail, hang in there. I'll e-mail you once your account is clear.
Thanks much.
Kristi
