I don't work here, I just hang out here so all I can do is guess.

In one of my favorite bars in the world (McSorely's in NYC) there are a great many interesting artifacts hanging on the walls. One of them is a hand painted sign that reads, "Be Good or Be Gone." That concept, along with the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing seems to be the operant policy regarding user accounts here. Accounts that generate spam get nuked.

As far as stiffening the new user accreditation process, culturally we as Deadheads have been all about openness and inclusion, so it would logically follow that any website for, by and about us should mirror that basic posture. Engage us constructively and we are highly likely to reciprocate. Act like a jerk and the probable outcome is that you will be either ignored to death or someone will decide that they are the instrument of Karma and deal with you, one way or another.

Besides, I don't know how one might implement any sort of criteria for further qualifying potential users. Would they have to pass some sort of test or something? And test what? There's more than enough "Deader-Than-Thou" floating around for my taste as it is. I think you kinda have to leave the door open, wait 'til that deal comes round, and then don't let that deal go down.

But that's just how I see it. Anybody else have any bright ideas?

The introduction of any user verification process (there wasn't one when I first signed up) as well as the captcha (that's what those verification thingys are called) has slowed the spammage by at least making it extremely difficult to automate the barrage. Now it at least takes manual intervention by a "dedicated" actual human being (or reasonable facsimile thereof) sitting at a keyboard to annoy us.

The best thing we as users can do is try to ignore it until marye can come along with the digital dustpan and broom and certainly not respond to it by making other posts about it. I'm assuming everyone knows better than to click on any of the proffered links. Unless, of course, any of us happen to be closet black hats with a penchant for launching DDOS attacks with whatever bot-nets we've been able to marshall, in which case by all means please extract the URL's encoded and have at them. They most certainly deserve it.

The sad truth is that it's most unfortunate that marye's valuable time has to be squandered on this sort of ridiculous housekeeping. I wish I had a better answer for her and us.

but I suspect that the development and administration resources available to maintain this site are overtasked and undermanned. The site is run by Rhino/WMG and I believe the staff tasked here also have other duties as well. Not to mention the typical slate of continually shifting priorities present in any corporate environment, and the revenues available from the marketing effort which ultimately make budget available to subsidize the Customer Service Experience.

The somewhat recent changes to the site's overall functionality and navigation are probably due to a version upgrade of the content management system and it seems to me that upgrade process wasn't properly tested in development before being deployed into production. I believe that this caused the indexes on the underlying database for the CMS to get trashed which is probably what caused all the crossed up thread subjects and posts, many of which they seem to have gotten re-sorted out.

I haven't been to the chatroom in quite some time so I can't competently speculate about any diagnosis. The last time I was there it had been effectively outsourced to a third party freeware vendor who actually provided the server and network bandwidth for production implementation. While certainly a very kind and generous posture of that vendor to take, it is also the poster child for Unsustainable Revenue Model.

Despite all this, many aspects of the site do continue to work as they are supposed to, new features and initiatives such as Blair's Blog and The Dead Covers Project (and the ability to edit posts!) get introduced, and hopefully the things that get broken as the bus continues to roll will eventually draw the attention of the mechanics needed to repair them. As users, all we can do is point out when the Wheels are squeaking and we won't slow down. They're bound to grease them if we make enough sound.

...the immense amount of spam. Creative minds could think up a way to limit it. Perhaps, a vetting process for joining the site? I agree, the site has gone squirrelly ever since about Sept. of last year. I don't know if it's for lack of effort, or caring as much as it is the futile nature of defending against the bombardment from entities that wish to destroy the site (hackers). There is a disturbing lack of transparency as to what the problems are, that there even is one, from the site administrators much less that they hear our cries and are addressing the issues.

but honestly am starting to care less, because seems more and more obvious that nobody behind the site cares one tiny bit (besides marye) have given up on us. Am computer savvy enough to know that these tweaks are not that hard to fix, and that also a couple of users have offered their assistance over the years-only to be politely denied.

Find myself looking here less and less, unless a particularly interesting topic comes up in the threads when I DO look.