 Submitted by Mebake on April 26, 2010 - 12:50am
I have been striving to join many discussion topics and blogs, but i keep on seeing: Spam filter has been triggered... blah blah... WHY?
Lately, i have seen: you must complete CAPTCHA .... blah blah, and when i complete it, it keeps saying that i did not enter it correctly, although i did mind all case sensitive letters.
WHAT IS GOING ON? SOMEONE HELP!
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Think you should e-mail the administrator
I know it can be really annoying; it's happened to me.
But the downside of having loads of spam flying around for all of us is far worse.
I'm sure Floyd will do what he can to help out.
Best wishes
Andy
I have just marked you as a
I have just marked you as a regular user so you shouldnt see the capcha anymore. I have no idea why the capcha thing would be giving you the errors, but we have to have something because I wake every morning and have to spend a lot of time clearing out the garbage that spammers leave both in comments, posts, and profiles even with those filters in place, and yes, without it there would never be enough time to make this site spam-free. You would find the site even less usable if all the spammers got free-reign I am sure. Please send a message to me or Floyd if you encounter problems next time.
Just started getting the capcha thing
and am not really happy with it. I joined, and shouldn't have to fill out things to post, as to spammers isn't there some sort of way to filter them out, not having joined?
Don't think I will even try to upload photos since half the ones I see are only half there and its NOT my machine, browser or spam filters stopping them from loading, since on occasion a refresh will work just fine, but others it doesn't do a thing.
You post to show you're a
You post to show you're a person interested in discussions on the site and I'll try to get you marked as a human user. It's a manual process though, so basically what I'm doing is marking you as "trusted". Just joining as a member doesnt do that since lots of new users end up having to be banned as spam accounts.
As for the spam thing - they come in all forms. I spend most of my day banning "users" who join so that they can create profiles with links to their businesses (and I'm not talking about bread businesses either. There are ALL SORTS of things that have nothing to do with the site that these guys try to post here. It requires a lot of monitoring to keep this site from being overrun with irrelevant drivel).
Or they join and write comments to posts that are not really about the post but an excuse to include a link to something random that they are trying to get boosted in google searches. Sorry - the capcha is an annoying side effect of trying to filter the programs that people write to automate spam comments, posters and so on. When folks join and write intro posts and generally start contributing, Floyd and I try to go in and mark those folks as real humans, (I just marked you EvaB) but it's a manual process and I go through many new users per day, many folks join and never post so I have no way to tell until they start posting regularly whether they are humans/non spammers until they write, and I dont always catch folks right away. Remember we're not a big "staff" running this site and please be patient and again, sending us a message is generally nicer than posting big rants on the forum - we're not exactly staff of a large company, afterall.
Thanks for considering me human
And I can see the site requires a lot of work, but then again, I get rather frustraed to only see parts of a picture, and be told its my computer and browser when the next link I visit shows huge pictures and all of them visible!
I simply asked if this were being seen by anyone else and got the comment that it was my computer and my browser without even an inquirey as to whether or not it was every thread with pictures or only a few, and that annoys me since I got the same annoying run around from my former ISP about connections, well it had to be my computer and my browser that wasn't allowing proper connections. NO IT WASN'T it was their server!
I don't mind the capcha, but today was a first for it, and I have posted for several days without it showing up, so did wonder. I find it difficult to read as its distorted, and I know that is for a reason, but will gladly fill it in if required.
Thank you for the good job you do with the site, and I do love the topics, and wish spammers would quietly fold their tents up and leave us alone. They are the reason that a lot of web sites quit, and that is sad as I think the access to information the net has provided is wonderful.
Im not sure what picture
Im not sure what picture problem and comment thread you are referring to - people upload photos to all sorts of different photo hosting places, so it's entirely possible that a photo could be having problems from a particular host that isnt on this site, which would be why a picture on one person's post loads fine but the ones on another persons post do not. Or the pictures could be too big - I know that I have seen posts that people put on here and in their baking blogs with giant images which never show up when I load the pages from my phone browser (it is more related to image resolution and MB size than just how large in pixels it is - a very well compressed image can be larger sized on my screen but still be easier to download than a picture that was taken straight out of a camera that was shooting in superfine quality mode, for example), but which work fine from a regular computer with a better connection. Sometimes the problem is just temporary like if the photo hosting is on some place on the internet which was having temporary connection problems too.
Or there are also really ancient threads on the site which maybe 4 years ago had photos but which the users had those photos deleted, whether it be because of their accounts filling up or expiring or whatnot, or clearing up space, from those photo hosting sites. We've debated what to do with the really old threads that aren't straight-up lesson posts and stories - maybe freezing them at least, so that if there is going to be a new discussion about a topic posted 5 years ago, it could be a brand new one rather than attached to one with ancient history and users that may or may not still be around on the site. Still debating that one.
The spammers will always be there. There are people who make it their business to go around "boosting google ranks" for other people, so they literally are paid to sit around and make fake comments and profiles with links to the products and websites that hired them for that purpose. Those generally get caught and deleted, but even with the capchas and the filtering software there still needs to be someone monitoring those guys since they always find new ways to get around it - a bit like roaches, I'm afraid.
pictures
I can't exactly remember which threads had the poor pictures, but I can remember that I have run into many with about the top third of the pictures showing, sometimes a refresh will bring the full pictures up, and sometimes not, but the odd thing is its not always the same poster, and I've seen posts from some of them in other threads with full pictures. And it seems to be only on this site that I'm having the problem.
Now that doesn't mean that there is something wrong with the site, just something with either the posters pictures, the way they are posted, or the html in the posting, which could be limiting the size of the picture, and not using the full picture as its way too large. Its just annoying to be told its the crumb shot, and see a table in the background and no bread at all.
Since I haven't tried posting a picture here, I don't know about sizes and so forth, and do know that sometimes large pictures (web ready or email ready with 92 pix to the inch) come out huge when trying to view them of course depending on the size of the original when its converted, been there done that and don't want to do it again either.
The other thing, is that several of the posts have a mix of the full normal pictures, and the ones with just the top third showing, and not always with any seeming reason, not one then the other, or even one then all the rest, its just mixed.
Well, my guess is most sites
Well, my guess is most sites you visit are professionally run "the company controls the content" sort of websites, where all the stuff is hosted on one server, not a mishmash community setting like what we have here... but that's just a guess. Because of that, it's not surprising for our site to be the only one where you encounter something like "one post works just fine and another page that has some oddness".
Sure - it'd be certainly something to say "no one can post anything unless it passes through us first" - so we go and make sure that all your pictures are sized right, sitting on proper servers, and all the code in the posts is right too. That's not going to happen though - there's no way we have the time for that. I dont know of any way to force our users to do the due-diligence of resizing their images - do you? We have a few limits as it is and spend tons of time fielding tech support questions - but recall please, we're not a hired staff - so better for folks to use something like Flickr. But as long as we're an open community, we're going to have some folks posting here with varied degrees of computer knowledge, and we're just happy when we can get folks to not use the caps lock key. ;)
Besides, we can't even get all our community members to stop copy-pasting from Word documents, which always messes up the posts with miles of code garbage that Microsoft throws in there, so I can't even imagine policing all the photo works. But anyway, we're not a photo hosting site - there's plenty of paid services with full staff for answering tech support and so forth on that sort of thing. We just wanted to host a place for people to talk bread.
You say you get the images on a refresh, or it'll only load part of the picture - that sounds to me like a "youve got too much stuff trying to load through the pipe" sort of thing. I imagine some of the longer threads can be hard on folks with dialup, or folks whose connections are pretty flakey.
I guess I don't really know what to say, other than...well...I'm seeing the pictures load fine, though once in a while someone will post something from a server that has some issues or I'm on a not-so-fast connection so it cant load all the stuff on a page, particularly on the really old threads which are getting to be more like long sagas with the hundreds of comments.
Beyond that, without a specific problematic post to refer to and just a "your site acts bad" kind of statement, I have no way to help you, nothing constructive can be done, other than I guess you expressing how "annoyed" you are. sorry? If you point me to a specific case, I can take a look....but...
Like I said - we are debating what to do with those older threads that are getting long these days, and have even talked about doing a whole refresh to the way the site looks in general (Floyd doesnt like all the boxes and lines, and we want to find a way to make it a bit more streamlined - especially now that we're accessing it from mobile phones and iPad type devices more) - but all that takes a lot of time, which is, sadly, also something we almost never seem to have these days. I am hoping that maybe late this summer things will ease up in our schedules, and *knock on wood* no new major disasters on the scale of Haiti hit which then suck up all Floyd's time again, but until then we're going to have to put up with some of the quirks that having a website comprised so much by the patchwork of contributions from our large community.
downloads
since I have sattelite high speed, can't see why I should be having problems downloading, but agree that its likely the host sites servers that are a problem, the thing I find very difficult to fathom is why in the same post I will have 3 out of 5 pictures that show only the top third, and the other two just fine! They show up as same size on the page (or at least seem to be same size other than the crop effect) and its not like its the first three or last three, but mixed. Some threads are all cropped, some are fine, and some are mixed, and if you are administering the site your computer will see the site as normal, where as my computer not having the edit and so forth capabilities will see it as others coming in may.
As to the older longer threads, maybe you need an archive for those and put up disclaimers about the possible problems while accessing these. I find the forum listings very difficult to work through, as there are so many, with sometimes pages and pages of listings. I have enjoyed the ones I've seen, but also been frustrated by some.
Its not the fault of your administration, simply the fault of being a well visited and used site! I do hope you manage to find some solution to many of the problems you encounter daily. Don't give up, and don't worry too much about the complainers like me, we complain, but we are still here aren't we???
Bow to your hard work
Mrs. Floyd, that's hard work to have to sweep the garbage out every time you come in. I visit TFL a few times a day, and each time I come here I enjoy my short stay. Thanks to you and Floyd, we have a clean place to share our passion/obsession! :-) My bow to your hard work!
Al
Hey folks....
Let's remember that this terrific forum is gratis - free - no membership fees - and is possible only through the efforts of Dorota and Floyd, who give up time with each other and their kids to maintain TFL.
Please keep that in mind before posting criticisms because you've been inconvienced. Heck, I see the captchas as little games. It's no big deal.
My deep thanks to Dorota and Floyd for allowing this community to flourish, and for doing it so gracously, as well.
Lindy
Well said, Al and Lindy!
I am sure you are expressing the same feelings the majority of the TFL members have concerning the work that Floyd and Dorota have done maintaining the site for all of us to share and enjoy.
Thanks again Floyd and Dorota.
Don
Agreed
It's not easy, as I found when I first joined.
American and UK English do not work the same way for spammers etc.
You do a really great job, the admin team. Thanks to all of you [and I know and appreciate you're a very small team too]
Best wishes
Andy
Stand up and applaud
Dorota and Floyd deserve accolades for administering this fabulous site. As a former IT person, I understand the grief that spammers, hackers, etc and the time it takes to administer this site.. As mentioned above, this is a free site that makes available a wealth of information. As I tell computer frustrated folks, interacting with a computer requires patience and if you don't have any you shouldn't bother to turn on the power button. Life is too short to worry about incidental things such as this. Let concentrate on baking some great bread and sharing on a medium that Floyd and Dorota are so generous to provide and consume immeasurable time doing it. Hats off to both of you and THANK YOU!
Adding a thank you! Me not
Adding a thank you! Me not being an IT person in the least I had no idea abut the things that you guys need to do in order to keep this site pleasant and up and running! Awesome job and very much appreciated!
Christina
Count me in
From day one, I've appreciated the clean, spam free enviornment of The Fresh Loaf. I had no idea how much work it is to keep it that way. Please keep doing what you're doing. You have one of the best site on the internet.
Thank you,
Larry
OMG I had no idea that Floyd
OMG I had no idea that Floyd and Dorota are doing this manually! I have e-mailed Floyd when i first posted this. I join the lot in thanking FLoyd and Dorota for their immense endeavour to make this site wonderful as it is.
Again, thanks Dorota for Marking me.
KHalid
Floyd's been wiped out with a
Floyd's been wiped out with a nasty cold this week so I've been mostly trying to keep up solo. :)
Happy baking!
Hope he feels better soon
Geez, that's the last thing you need. Hope he feels better soon. Please give him our regards and take care of yourself too.
Al
I love your website
even though I find some of the topics way above my standard. I have frustrations loading pics too but heck if they don't get posted, it's no big deal except I don't get to see some of the other pics shown against the recipes posted by the other members which can be a little frustrating
A belated THANKS.
I too thank Floyd and Dorota for the wonderful websaite. I have enjoyed exchanging ideas on bread baking.
Ford
Appreciated
Hey Floyd and Dorota,
I think by the comments your effort is certainly appreciated and respected.....thankyou again.
TFL members
"Don't sweat over the little things........... most things are little"
When you bake a bad loaf you've got a bad loaf.......but when the fish stop biting thats the time to start worrying.
There is no such thing as a bad loaf of bread..........only some loaves are better than others.
Any other words of layback wisdom out there to share and enjoy while we bake our bread.
Share some with your recipes and ideas.
Cheers...............Pete