Grateful Dead

dead.net the official site

Hi is the chat room down for good?

I represent at LEAST 10 PPL who have asked me about the chat. I pass on it has been reported but has been a long time IMO. Once again our kind tech brother Savage has opened up his chat to us. http://www.savagetek.com/oss/

When a new feature is introduced in a forum like this, there's always going to be someone who tries to exploit it, so my guess is that there would be some blowback from a "Report Spam" button; it's almost too easy to imagine that some might find a thing like that to be useful in a flame war, for example.

...for a 'report spam' button. It's a really good one and should be implemented. Don't be surprised if some unforeseen leak in the dike would spring forth as a result of that however. This site reminds me a little of a Rube Goldberg contraption sometimes. tehehehehe. Lots of love, folks. Have a grateful day.

> verification process...as well as the captcha...has slowed the spammage I agree with Mr. Pid's assessment. The type of spam I see here doesn't seem to be bot-posted. A person has to set up an account and then deal with the captcha; you can spam dead.net, but it's a very labor intensive process for a rather narrow niche. > a more stringent sign up and user verification process [to] deter these dope wads Such barriers to entry would also make it much more difficult for the non-spammers, which likely far outnumber the dope wads, as you call them, wilfredtjones. My suggestion would be to add a "Report Spam" button to each post, like on craigslist, which wouldn't reduce the number of spam posts, but which would make them easier for marye to find and eradicate.

Sure is tough paging thru the shows until you get to 2/21/73, the discover the Attendees heading doesn't work. Can dead.net repair the access to shows by year and list those who attended?I've asked for the photo upload mechanism to be repaired too: I've discontinued trying to post photos.

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?

...by the same token though, I notice that the spammers are invariably brand spanking new users. Would not a more stringent sign up and user verification process deter these dope wads? I bet it goes back to limited resources, right?

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.

That make things easier to understand. Thanks for the analysis. I appreciate it. What do you think about the spam issue? Is that fixable in your estimation? The whatzitcalled thingy on the bottom sure ain't workin'...