List any improvements or things you would like to see on the forum here.
Is there any way to get rid of those spammers that have been surfacing lately?
Working on it!
Cool. Let us all know if we can help in any way with that. I’m sure everyone would be more than willing to do what we can.
while it’s nice to have avatars … i would have thought that there were more pressing issues to deal with 
and 160px by 160px is (imo) too big. 80px by 80px is more than enough.
[quote=“baconbuttie”]while it’s nice to have avatars … i would have thought that there were more pressing issues to deal with
and 160px by 160px is (imo) too big. 80px by 80px is more than enough.[/quote]
Hey, I agree. I took a couple of hours yesterday tracking down, banning, and removing all the spamers. Hopefully this will help the reading experience. I also added Avitars because I thought it was silly not to have them.
matt,
can i ask you to add mods to the forums that don’t have one please ? maybe even consider adding another to the popular forums too … there are plenty of regulars to choose from.
i appreciate that the devs tend to use IRC and the mailing lists for feedback, but would it be possible to get the guys to drop in here too ? what would be great is a forum for Asterisk Betas that is actively used by the devs, where people can post their experiences.
i logged onto IRC for the first time in about 8 years (spent far too much of my 'net childhood telnetting to IRC servers !!) and had a look at the #asterisk channel … far too much going on there 
But do the other forums really need mods? There isn’t much traffic on them. I think it would be difficult to get any devs on here as they already have too many places to read/respond to. (irc, mailing lists, bug tracker)
ouch ! that kinda removes the need for a Developers forum … people post there expecting it to be seen by someone on the dev team. although if they wait long enough they’ll find out it doesn’t happen.
one thing i noticed today … this bb isn’t mentioned here … digium.com/en/supportcenter/ … munity.php
Yes it kind of does. You could always try to go into #asterisk-dev and get people to visit the forum.
Just informed the webmasters, thanks!
[quote=“mogorman”]After reading through the board today I have noticed complaints of questions going unanswered. That people are not getting to the really tough questions. I do have a recommendation for this.
When you post a new topic requesting assistance flag the topic in such a manner that people can quickly spot it and give you a response like such
[HELP] Having problems with my m00s3 & asterisk.
And after you have been helped. changing the topic to
[RESOLVED] Having problems with my m00s3 & asterisk.
Other flags can be helpful as well.
[TIPS]
[NEWS]
[etc]
Also another plee/sugestion. Do not cross post. placing the same question in both dev/users/etc does not help and merely pollutes the forum. Anyways those are just suggestions. Please reply with thoughts or comments, or just start doing it ^_^.[/quote]
please, please, please … someone give me more tools to ban some of these spammers !!! 
do they have scraping code so that they can detect the absence of a moderator ? everytime i disappear for a few minutes we seem to get a new batch, and it’s increasing in the number of posts in each “run”.
Can we have a purge of all the spam posts from the forum? This together with a ban or IP ban on spammers.
If you can get a new member to confirm their account by email, where they have to click on a link or reply to the email, then if they spam you can ban their email address and slow them down.
why a purge ? the mods drop all the spam when they get a chance to get to the forum. if you find something that’s old or has been missed, let either myself or muppetmaster know.
i’ve been assured that in january we’re going to get a board update that should stop/reduce the output of the spambots. let’s hope.
As a new Asterisk user/admin I would find it really useful to have a thread where I could find loads of tips and tricks that will save me time during the initial stages of setup and configuration. You all have a wealth of knowledge and experience and no doubt know about many of the hurdles that us newbies will encounter early on in Asterisk management. I agree there’s no substitute for experience but there’s also no point re-inventing the wheel !!
Thanks everyone for a great forum!
Dean
also just wanted to toss my hat in the ring if you are looking for another volunteer spam cleaner… I’m usually on at least once a day and I usually see 4-5 spams that I can clean up per visit…
helix,
i’ll second you both MM and i are in europe, so there’s a big hole in the mod cover on the forum, despite me often being hard at work at 3am !!
One of us seems to get the spam deleted, I’m usually checking a good bit but sometimes I get real busy 
I think we can last about another 3 weeks until we have better spam blocks implemented on the forum.
i had another few thoughts for getting rid of spam, not sure how easy these would be to do on our forum package…
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each new acct is a lower class account. The first few posts they make are moderated and must be manually approved. I don’t think we get THAT many new members, so this should be a very manageable queue. I know i’d be happy to help with it- the basic criteria would be if it’s not spam, pass it. After someone gets 3-4 approved posts, the moderation is no longer needed and they become a normal member.
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possibly in combination with the above or only applying to members with less than 10-20 posts: Implement a URL Whitelist which would contain most known URLs relating to VoIP: IE voip-info, digium, various suppliers, etc. For someone with less than say 20 posts, if they make a post which contains a URL outside the whitelist, it is put in a moderation queue and must be manually approved by a moderator.
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(probably harder) for the first 5 or 10 posts someone makes, include a “THIS IS SPAM” button. If it gets pushed by more than 10 or so people, the post is removed to a moderation queue and the rest of the user’s posts go into moderation.
The end result of any or all of these shoudl be that dealing with spam doesn’t fall solely in the bounds of find/delete/ban, and a spammer would have to put effort into spamming hte site (which they probably wouldn’t bother with)…
Can i suggest a forum Upgrade?
I have been working with and using Invision power boards for some time now, and have found them to be awesome in blocking spammers and also moderating the forums. PHPBB is damn good for what it is, but its functionality has not improved in many versions a great deal.
In truth these forums should be getting a whole lot more of traffic, there are so many damn Asterisk users out there, but i have found none of them like to come here due to the way the forums are set out, there is no eye candy I.E the same look of the forums all the time (Which is not bad if it was a nice layout) and the lack of responses that can come forth by the community here on these forums.
I can see this forum having much much much more potential then what it has now, and if promoted by all who visit it, the forums should in fact become a huge hit with * users, i for one would love to see these forums flourish with more activity, it would certainly help the many users out there.
Can i also make the following suggestions in terms of Thread and Sub Forums? ahh what the heck i will do it any way
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Instead of users, could it possible be Asterisk >>>
“Beginners” (Post here if you are a beginner looking for help or Information)
** This will then direct beginners to the right section and can also help moderators in moving posts to their properly allocated places. -
Advanced Users = like above, this section is used for advanced users to discuss things amongst themselves, this helps stimulate higher in depth discussions which help contribute to the development of Asterisk in the long run.
There are a few more categories that i can think of which would be great for these forums, but i just want to express my opinion not push them into someones face.
Cheers,
David.