You guys are absolutely right. This is what I was talking about. The spam makes the forum hard enough to use, but makes it virtually worthless when the threads are removed like the index. Until my post here is posted, this thread won't be listed. If you went into the "Forum Admin & Support" forum while I'm typing this, you wouldn't see this thread listed. The content in this forum doesn't have any value if we can't find it. The outcome is the same as if a hacker had come in and deleted posts or performed a denial of service attack.

Anyhow...

Bumping again to make this thread visible again after the latest spam attack.

Is it possible for the mods to insert a place-holding comment into a thread before deleting all the spam? that way the thread still shows up?

I think the mods are doing a FANTASTIC job of deleting the spam ASAP. Now if we could just figure out how to keep the threads from going invisible?

I believe the place holder would need to come after the spam is deleted. It'd be better if the reference to the thread in the index wasn't deleted. Yeah, it'd cause deleted spam to phantom bump threads, but that's better than invisible threads.

"I believe the place holder would need to come after the spam is deleted. It'd be better if the reference to the thread in the index wasn't deleted. Yeah, it'd cause deleted spam to phantom bump threads, but that's better than invisible threads."

I suspect that doing ANY deletion would cause the index/database mismatch. Unfortunatly, any manual deletion, could cause a problem. There are other circumstances...
typical example:
Records (all the same size) Index
record(1,2,3) belong to thread A index A is (#1,#2,#3)
record(4,5,6) belong to thread B index B is (#4,#5,#6)

Manually, we mark the database record 2 as spam, then delete it putting it in an "unused" list.

We always have to start at the beginning, so we will assume 1 (ordinality and cardinality are different, though)
So now our database is
Records Index
record(1,3) belong to thread A index A is (#1,#2,#3) (we didn't change it)
record(4,5,6) belong to thread B index B is (#4,#5,#6) (no changes here)

If I index to record 3, where do I go? Count three records, by the index. I am actually now looking at a different thread, record 4, in thread B. I look up the header and dutifully report thread B and update the subject list. But, duplicates are not allowed, so, I delete the second instance of thead B that I come to. The program is happy because it did it's job. From my standpoint Index A is removed from the list...it "Disapeared." But, the records are still there and intact.
(Just an example, it might not happen quite this way. Old, unsophisticated programs are known to do this or in some cases, actually crash. Just do not try to delete the last record of the ENTIRE database...not sure how *that* will be handled...)

The spammer got clever this time. By not entering a name, it's more difficult to check their profile to see how prolific they've been. It's still possible though.

So far this guy has 112 posts listed, not counting any that Roger might have already deleted.
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/profile.html?u=wcoshowmoses

Right now the site is blocking (by human action) known "bad guys. " This is akin to keeping your front door unlocked and open and waiting to recognize the last guy burgled your house and tackle him on the threshold.

A solution would be to go to a scheme were only known good guys/gals were allowed access. This would of course make it harder for guests to register (and most likely require a challenge response registration process) and delay guest postings but would deliver a quality of service to the paid membership. Moving to HTTPS might help too.

uninvisibility bump

Geez, and another spam attack starts yet again. My post count is quickly going to jump a few thousand with all this uninvisibility bumping needed to keep threads around.

Can someone in admin bump the thread under Philmont called "Freezer bag cooking"
It has become invisible.

thanks
Al