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Not wishing to merge threads from two different forums - I've replied to some of these bits of feedback in the quoted thread instead of here.

Not going to add any sort of post requirement before accessing the classifieds and probably never will. Whilst this does leave users slightly more vulnerable to scammers the classifieds are the primary access point for new members (some of who eventually become frequent contributors to the remainder of the forum). I'll also add that the relative success of AFUK's classifieds is that it allows buyers to contact sellers far more easily than some similar platforms (which then translates into items selling more quickly). If a change was made to accessing the classifieds it would probably work for an extended period of time but there would be a drop-off in new listings on the classifieds in the medium to long term which would precipitate as less content overall on the forums. Facebook and Discord are not only popular because everybody is already on there (in many cases multiple times a day) but because you don't even have to think about doing any amount of legwork before contacting a potential buyer or seller. Closing the gap between forums and big services like this starts at having as little extra work for new users as is feasible. The above is also why care has to be taken before adding new sign up requirements in order to help prevent spamming (I'm sure everyone is familiar with just how much of this we get). There is currently a cap on how much 'content' you can post/create before you reach a certain account age - this is intended to be one of a number of small things that frustrate people spamming and scamming at scale but it is a bit of an arms race with no solution that doesn't come at the cost of significantly lower new registrations. Did consider a 'bond' at one point of a similarly small amount which would be refunded after a specific period of time but this comes with loads of real life liabilities. Also as above any non-refundable small contribution for buyers and sellers would probably be catastrophic for fresh sign ups I'm afraid. I am likely going to add a new notification to make this more prominent to new members. As it stands there are two notifications that you receive as a new member and it's likely that adding a third won't help. There is of course the floating permanent notification at the top of the classifieds with a warning and some very basic guidelines. Any concise recommendations to add to this list of tips would be greatly appreciated. I've asked for clarification on this but for now the forum does not notify of new classifieds on Discord as we're probably not allowed to even link to new listings under these new guidelines. Although it's not exactly foolproof prevention of anybody who does a little bit of research on this (thankfully most scammers seem to be pretty thick) we do screen IPs (for anti-spam purposes more than anything) in order to catch VPNs etc. (to the degree that it is feasible to do so). Agree wholeheartedly. This is the first recommendation in the list recommendations given at the top of the classifieds for a reason. Anybody looking to save a couple of quid on a transaction of hundreds of pounds with somebody they don't know is asking for trouble.

This was abused by spammers and removed as a result. Sorry about that.

I use Dark Reader in Firefox but it actually makes the site slightly lighter (when it's already in dark mode).

Just report those kind of posts please. The flagging is purely for the kind of obvious botting that we've been sustaining (all of the vice-y stuff).

I've made some changes that I won't go in to in case one of the spammers bothers to read this thread. There are now some spam moderators too. Thank you to everyone who is going to help with flagging and appreciate those of you who flag these normally through the report system as it does help us react to them more quickly. Registrations will reopen at 20:00CST tomorrow.

Supporters can now sign up to be granted 'Spam Flagger' powers. If this doesn't get enough participants then I'll broaden who's eligible to get these. Registrations are suspended but unfortunately these were accounts pending verification. There will likely be more, but I have run through the list of verifying accounts and deleted anyone overly suspicious. I believe that this is because the forum counts your sign up date/time as being from when you validated your account, not from when you actually filled out the registration form. @L3wisD

New registrations are suspended until this can be figured out. Clearly the question and answer challenge has been solved and shared somewhere. Unfortunately most are smart enough to use a VPN. Keyword blocking is something I'm trying via Cleantalk, but for whatever reason it doesn't appear to always be working. These spam posts are usually deleted within an hour but some are done at 4am when no one with current moderation powers is around. New moderators: it's one of the options that I'm looking into now. I'll post here with an update.

They certainly need rewriting to be more simple. The bits about UK law don't need to be in the same section as the headline rules.

The problem is deeper than making 'complete' listings show as 'sold'. I don't want expired listings to show as 'sold' (which is what this would do). Many people dig through old advertisements and send messages to sellers looking to buy items in the hopes that they may still actually be available. I currently judge it as the lesser of two evils that we might find a sale for our listed items that we've not been able - or forgotten - to relist. Even many months after the fact there is a lot of potential for niche listings to find a buyer. I understand that this can be annoying for sellers who do stay on top of relisting their items. What would be required is the ability to show hidden, 'expired' listings and for users to easily mark their items as sold, withdrawn or otherwise even after they are 'expired' (this may already be possible). Additionally some kind of timer on 'expired' listings moving from simply marked 'expired' (perhaps for 7 days) to hidden by default (as mentioned).

I don't see why not. If @Jedi_Master is ok with it then I'll edit the rules.

Have you received these yet? I've sent out three waves since your post. Sent you a PM in case. Buying a patch doesn't make you a supporter I'm afraid. We culled a lot of the group too of people who hadn't signed in for some time, but I wouldn't be able to say if you're in that group or not as there aren't any logs. Supporters are selected by existing supporters every few years but it's just a meaningless title of recognition for being a long term contributor. You should get a marker under your name to show yourself as a patch owner. I'll see why this isn't showing up (possibly the plugin was out of date and therefore disabled). Don't remind me about the Novrisch background mistake I made

Should be sorted now but as usual outlook, live, hotmail and btinternet, yahoo etc. are still putting them straight into spam so we'll see what happens in the longer term.

Can someone tell me if they're able to see these yet? https://airsoft-forums.uk/attachments/ I think this was noted as a bug last year so I'm hoping it's fixed. I see nothing in the documentation to say whether this has happened. If it continues to be an issue I can probably allow editing of archived threads (but I'd rather not allow this for hopefully obvious reasons).

I was about to delete this thread and never acknowledge its existence but realised I should probably just add the new section.

Should be fixed now. Please post here if not.

2FA via Google Authenticator is now enabled. You may set this up here: https://airsoft-forums.uk/settings/account-security/ This will remain an optional - encouraged - choice, but it's there nontheless for those who want it. It's only currently configured to prompt when changing certain account settings or when logging in from a new device. New users will be informed of this feature when signing in for the first time.

Awful. Thanks.

After attempting to implement two different 3rd party antispam measures, leaning on IPS's supposedly 'very good' antispam system and generally restricting post counts and interactions on new accounts to a minimum to keep spam down it's still obvious that spam is getting through (and in a particularly obnoxious way). Admitting defeat, I've enabled the question and answer challenge spam prevention on the sign-up form with two questions currently in the rotation. You've probably seen this a lot on other forums, but in case you aren't familiar the Q&A challenge is simply a single question posed to prospective new joiners that they have to answer correctly in order to sign up. Typically these questions are themed so as to fit that of the forum and confound spammers who probably don't even know what your forum's primary subject is anyway. I'd like to get this to five questions total and can't really think of anything else that fits the criteria below well so I'm hoping that a few of you can help with suggestions: Please do not post your suggestions here, but instead PM them to me*. I'd rather these answers aren't indexed and easily searchable on our own URL. Free patch (posted) for the 3-4 that're picked. Remember: The person signing up might have very little knowledge of airsoft at all Questions should nevertheless probably be airsoft themed to reduce overlap with these spammer's general knowledge Answers to these questions should be short as they will be checked against a list of appropriate answers with no human in the loop at all, so if they have to answer with more than one or two words it's probably not going to work If you want to see the existing questions, here they are: Not necessarily attached to either question (particularly the second). *I've enabled post approval simply so that one of you doesn't accidentally spill the beans on a good question.

They do still go monthly-ish. If you haven't had yours just send me a PM and I'll sort it out.

Also extremely disappointed

I've been playing around with the Sonic Mini 8K this week. Providing the model sculpters themselves can keep up - as they have been able to do already - these machines will probably exceed the quality of the GW cast resin minis (but be shy of the injection moulded classics) whilst being about 80-90% as durable. You're not going to see this from many quarters yet though as most are only just moving to 4K from the old 2K machines. Resin is also silly expensive for many.