Seiko 7A38 - by the numbers

I must admit I'm a little disappointed in the uptake of new member registrations so far. With all the other various distractions offered by Soshul Meedya, like Facebook groups (for example this Seiko 7A Club, started by Giuseppe in December last year, which are usually private and require members to register to even be able to view content) and Instagram, Reddit, etc. ... I can't say I'm unduly surprised. I had started to proactively invite members (initially from a list of a dozen or so, who still had pending unapproved applications to join the old Webs forum, since March). In view of the onslaught of Russian spammers who've managed to register this last week, I've put that on hold until we've come up with a permanent fix - a means of automatically validating new member registrations.

My topic title is a deliberate play on words. I'm referring to the membership numbers allocated to users by phpBB. Yes, I'm a little concerned about the lack of uptake, but also wondering how many 'undesirables' I've deleted so far. So let's quickly do the math.

The new forum was created (effectively offline) by Johnny_E around Midnight on 28th January, 2021. So you'd expect John to be #1. He's not. It's not found. He then created my user ID at 12:05 - as you can see from my profile, I'm #2.

Something I'd discovered earlier is that Users #3 through #48 are non-malicious Bots and Crawlers (Google, etc.) running in alphabetical order from Adsbot (Google) through to Yahoo Seeker. These were all created @ 12:05 on 28th January.

John was burning the midnight oil (and then some) and created his current member profile @ 03:09 am on 28th January. I suspect he was originally #1 (deservedly), but for whatever reason, he deleted and re-added it, giving him user #49.

The forum could possibly have gone live at that stage, but for a variety of reasons was delayed. I wanted to build up some content, to give new members something to read, but then got a bit carried away. John and I had already agreed that it would be best if the new website / forum used the same domain name. (I did think about applying for Seiko7A38.new, but the process is rather complicated). Webs had originally announced that all their sites would be migrated to VistaPrint by 31st March 2021, so having left it as late as possible, before completely abandoning the old forum, I initiated the transfer of the domain name on 15th March, allowing two weeks. I should have known better.

The domain transfer was finally completed a month later, which is when this website / forum went live (visible in the public domain) at midnight on Thursday 15th April. Some weeks (or months) earlier, I'd emailed my dear old friend and stalwart supporter of the old forum 'Paul in Vegas' , promising him that he'd be the first person I'd invite to sign up. Paul registered @ 08:08 am on 15th April as member user #53.

So what happened to member user numbers #50 through #52 ? Simple answer: The requested user does not exist. That's because I've deleted them. Before Paul had the chance to register as the first genuine new member, he was beaten to the punch by Russian spammers, starting @ 2:00 am. See the Hello Spammer; Goodbye Spammer !! thread. I've documented the first (to date most prolific), who managed to rack up a total of 23 SPAM posts, on that first night, but I certainly haven't mentioned all of them who've successfully registered in the last week - some albeit very briefly.

In fact, I've lost count. I reckon it's got to be at least 3 dozen. A couple more Russian spammers newly registered late last night, but I didn't think to record their user ID numbers. I was too busy blocking their IP's, email addresses and deleting them, before they became active. Apart from the fact I was half asleep at the time.

Newest bona fide member 'Yuri' (who is Italian, but with a name like that should consider himself very fortunate that I took the trouble to validate him), is user #91. He registered on Tuesday evening @ 7:30 pm. But there've been quite a few spammers who 've registered since. Just waiting for the next one to pop up; I'll be sure to get their number.

In fact, our newest member, who just registered earlier this afternoon, is thankfully not yet another Russian spammer, but a bona fide contributing member of the old forum - kerochan (David from Sweden), who's been assigned user #99.

Seiko7A38 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 22, 2021 12:45 pmIn fact, I've lost count. I reckon it's got to be at least 3 dozen. A couple more Russian spammers newly registered ....

By a quick bit of mental arithmetic: I've actually deleted a total of 39 (mostly Russian) spammers in the last week !

It's good to be back!

#53…! but who’s counting…