The countdown to 20K member count!

[Lex]

Ok, we know we have spammers galore in the member ranks, and we will probably prune those out soon, it will probably take out 10%, so we will go from 20K back to 18K if we do it all at once. I am inclined to do that. But it would be fun to celebrate 20K first! :-)

now if people would start participating all across the forum like there's a lot of us, I would be real happy.

Get out there and post, come out of your comfort zone of DIY, B & W, etc, and post around, I'd appreciate it.

So, 4 posts to 20K as of tonight!

We reached it once today, and then Kevin had to bust some spammers. We killed their system for now. They are persistent buggars.

[Kevin P]

We actually have over 20K. 20089 to be exact. 93 of them aren't in the forum's count since they're in the "Users Awaiting Email Confirmation" usergroup. Sometimes people register and then never activate their accounts. Sometimes spammers do this, because they're stupid or their bots mess up. I generally purge these accounts after 6 months if they don't come back, and this doesn't affect the count.

As for spammers, we have 1,302 in the dungeon, plus 26 in suspicious. I purge old dungeonites periodically, but I try to limit it so the user count doesn't fall off too much. Especially when we're near or at a milestone.

So, discounting dungeoned spammers, we have 18,787.

[Lex]

Ok, well we are 2 members away from the fake 20K, ok, inflated for spammers. We have a ways to go for the true 20K. For now, we'll take the 20K milestone. then we'll worry about our dungeon. lol. Thanks Kev.

[Kevin P]

Eventually I hope to get the entire dungeon purged, except for the past year's nummnuts, then purge year-old spammers monthly. But since they're included in the member count, I don't want to do it too fast as it does affect the count and how long it takes to reach a milestone.

Once we hit 20K plus a little cushion, I'll probably purge 1 old spammer for each 3-4 real member signups,. That way the count still goes up, and the spammer count goes down. I'll also start purging one old spammer for each new spammer, so new spammers aren't artificially raising the count and I can get the dungeon cleared of corpses. It's pretty smelly down there now. When I do this, you might see the membership drop by a small amount, but I'll keep it over 20K when I do.

Eventually, once the dungeon is trimmed and we have enough cushion with real members (over 20k not counting spammers), I'll modify the code so new spammers don't count toward the count at all. Then the count will be more accurate from then on out.

[Lex]

Sounds like a plan. I know you enjoy the great purge. hehe.

Squishing a spammer or two a day is bound to be good for tension release. lol. It's like Kevin's version of the squishy ball to squeeze.

[Kevin P]

Squishing a spammer or two a day is bound to be good for tension release. lol. It's like Kevin's version of the squishy ball to squeeze.

LOL... and then I can stop ruining my kybard.

(Dilbert reference there, check out the original strip here: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-09-08/ )

EDIT: We're at 19,999! 4 of them are spammer retards. There are some recent registrants who haven't activated their accounts, but they look spammish to me too.

[Kevin P]

We're there! DarkRay is our 20,000th member, give or take a few. :banana:

Let's hope he isn't a spammer.

[Lex]

If he is a spammer, he may be Dark Vader, not Dark Ray. lol.