LTG's Biggest Threads (and other fun reports)

[Teleguy61]

Once again, LTG proving it is the best site anywhere.

 

[GAD]

What would be your guestimate on how many "active" members there are here?
I just went through the Members menu...looking for a total number of registered members, and was floored by just how many spammers (that are still listed) you've dealt with.

Sorry I missed this.

I’ll need to think of a good test for “active”. There’s a difference between “last logged in” and “last posted”. My guess would be less than 300 with the most active being less than 50.

During the great spam purge I probably flagged 20k+ users. I can get more accurate numbers when I’m back at my desk. The reason I didn’t just delete them is because one of my scripts was a bit overzealous and banned some valid users, and every now and then someone complains that they were banned without merit (which they were). With the users intact they can retain their history.

 

[dreadnut]

Had to think about that one for a minute, Tom.

 

[GAD]

There are 29,354 users as of right now.
Of those, 20,821 are banned as spammers.

Of the remaining 8,533 users:

• 2,405 have zero posts
• 881 have one post
• 6,452 have <= 10 posts
• 2,081 have > 10 posts
• 794 have > 50 posts
• 536 have > 100 posts
• 339 have > 200 posts
• 193 have > 500 posts
• 139 have > 1,000 posts
• 35 have > 5,000 posts
• 16 have > 10,000 posts

These numbers are for all-time and do not discriminate on activity range. The vast number of non-banned users may be lurkers, but are likely inactive.

That's all for now. I have a big dentist appt. to go to.

 

[Teleguy61]

There are 29,354 users as of right now.
Of those, 20,821 are banned as spammers.

Of the remaining 8,533 users:

• 2,405 have zero posts
• 881 have one post
• 6,452 have <= 10 posts
• 2,081 have > 10 posts
• 794 have > 50 posts
• 536 have > 100 posts
• 339 have > 200 posts
• 193 have > 500 posts
• 139 have > 1,000 posts
• 35 have > 5,000 posts
• 16 have > 10,000 posts

These numbers are for all-time and do not discriminate on activity range. The vast number of non-banned users may be lurkers, but are likely inactive.

That's all for now. I have a big dentist appt. to go to.

Well us folks who hang around here are a very exclusive group aren't we?
No wonder LTG is such a high-class site!

 

[walrus]

...they were banned without merit...

This made me laugh out loud! As opposed to "banned with merit"?!

walrus

 

[GGJaguar]

Of those, 20,821 are banned as spammers.

Holy guacamole! That's more than a lot.

 

[GGJaguar]

2,405 have zero posts

Lurkers

 

[GGJaguar]

881 have one post

I signed in to have a question answered. It was answered, thanks. Now I will go and never return. Unless I have another question.

 

[markus]

… It was answered, thanks. …

The „thanks“-post would be #2 already …

markus

 

[GAD]

This made me laugh out loud! As opposed to "banned with merit"?!

walrus

Oh my yes. Many spammers have merited being banned.

 

[chazmo]

Holy guacamole! That's more than a lot.

Yeah, we've had a lot of fun over the years.

 

[Teleguy61]

Yeah, we've had a lot of fun over the years.

Please please keep it in the present tense!
We are having a lot of fun over the years.

 

[davismanLV]

Had to think about that one for a minute, Tom.

I read it twice and then thought, "I think this is profound?" and then gave it one more look. And decided, "Yes. It is."

 

[GAD]

More fun stats:

Users active in the past month: 594
Users active in the past six month: 1,284
Users active in the past year: 1,909

Adding a "must have 1 or more posts" rule, we get:

Users active in the past month: 469
Users active in the past six months: 865
Users active in the past year: 1,196

More than I thought, however that's using the "last activity" field in the software, and I'm not entirely sure how that's calculated. I suspect it's "user was logged in and viewed a page".

Looking it up that's "kinda true" (yeah - that's how programming really works) and is close enough for this exercise.

Interestingly, I queried how many users were "active" (0 posts OK) in the past 24 hours and got 195.That surprised me so I did it for the last hour and got 17 which perfectly matches the current "Members Online" tile on the front page:



Note that none of these stats include people (or bots) viewing the site without logging in. So far as I know there's no way to query the database for that, but I suspect that number to be anywhere from double to an order of magnitude larger based on system logs and the general state of the Members Online numbers I've seen over the years.

 

[Midnight Toker]

Keep in mind, Guilds are all over the world, and English is not spoken everywhere. I know on the live Led Zep collector forum I've been on for 20+ years, we started a "Zero poster" thread for longtime lurkers to finally introduce themselves. Most of the replies read like, "Hello, my name ______. No speak English good. Use translator program to read about favorite band." That forum has about 1800 members, 250 of which are active posters. About 1000 that check in regularly, and over 350,000 posts (and in the days of limited storage, old non Zep topics were regularly purged) there have been maybe 5 spammers in 20 years. (The reason why I thought the total here was mindboggling!) That site also has numerous well known hardcore collectors w/ connections to Zep that prefer to remain anonymous, but do communicate amongst each other via PM's.

 

[fronobulax]

Keep in mind, Guilds are all over the world, and English is not spoken everywhere. I know on the live Led Zep collector forum I've been on for 20+ years, we started a "Zero poster" thread for longtime lurkers to finally introduce themselves. Most of the replies read like, "Hello, my name ______. No speak English good. Use translator program to read about favorite band." That forum has about 1800 members, 250 of which are active posters. About 1000 that check in regularly, and over 350,000 posts (and in the days of limited storage, old non Zep topics were regularly purged) there have been maybe 5 spammers in 20 years. (The reason why I thought the total here was mindboggling!) That site also has numerous well known hardcore collectors w/ connections to Zep that prefer to remain anonymous, but do communicate amongst each other via PM's.

The number of visible spammers can be the result of a management policy and not just the frequency of attacks. At one point LTG was getting over 20 new account creation attempts per day, from spammers. The were never able to post and the accounts were deleted (and not permanently banned). Non-moderator users only knew about spammers if the mods complained in public or the mods missed one. When the policy is to delete all evidence of a spammer it is quite possibly that only a small handful of users actually notice one was there.

The current policy is to ban permanently. A side effect of that policy is that banned users are listed in member lists so users can see the magnitude of the problem. Banning, rather than deletion is used because storage is cheaper than it once was and one of the tools for identifying spammers is their similarity to known spammers. Banned, not deleted, spammers make various similarity tests possible.

 

[GAD]

Additionally, newer software makes spam filtering easier. There was a time when signing up to LTG was very open and there were only a fee few (easily bypassed) barriers of entry for spammers. Word gets out in the spammer community when a site is easy to access and then the bots move in.

Modern software makes the old spammer tools and techniques ineffective so there are far fewer spammers that get through the defenses. For now.

Like all things security related, it’s an arms race. Currently we’re mostly on the winning side. The price of that is eternal diligence.

 

[Midnight Toker]

Are new registrations automated? Sign up, automatically get a verification email? I know some forums require moderator/administrator pre approval.

 

[GAD]

Are new registrations automated? Sign up, automatically get a verification email? I know some forums require moderator/administrator pre approval.

Today the system totally automates the signup process, but if it can't definitively determine if someone is a spammer or non-spammer, then it kicks it to us for human intervention.