ForumUp English Language Support

BoomBoxDeluxe · Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 12:35 am Post subject: Mass deletion of user accounts?

Hello there,

I would like to know if you can help me out with the forum that I have recently been assigned to maintain.

Our forum has nearly 10, 000 registered user accounts.

Less than 100 are active legitimate users.

The rest user their profile to advertise inappropriate stuff.

From the Administrator's 'toolbox' I have found the tool where a user's account can be deleted, but amazingly, I have not found anything along the lines of where I can just slick a series of tick-boxes next to the users I want to delete, and then with just one click, the selected user accounts just disappear.

Surely I dont have to delete each account one-by-one?

THERE IS OVER NINE THOUSAND OF THEM !!!! Shocked

One-by-one would wear out my mouse, not to mention my fingers and patience!

Is there a mass-deletion tool somewhere in the toolbox that I haven't found?

If not, is it possible for the owner of ForumUp in its entirety to make a mass-deletion tool?

Its really needed.... and right now.

Surely, my forum isn't the only one with this mass-spamming problem?

Deleting over 9000 accounts, one at a time, while more are being added in the meanwhile?

How many months is that going to take?

Even if I disabled my forum, so that its not visible on the internet, thus blocking any new accounts from being made, deleting over 9000 accounts one-by-one is going to be absolute murder!

Someone pleeease help meeee! Mr. Green

-BoomBoxDeluxe.

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PirateScoobs · Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 12:50 am Post subject:

Unfortunately you must delete one-by-one. Just a idea, select a very very very very close friend/s to help you delete them all by making them admin. It's hard to suggest that since it is so risky.

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Jordan (PirateScoobs)

BoomBoxDeluxe · Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 1:33 am Post subject:

delete all of them one-by-one?!

That will take me forever!!!

So is that it then?

Has my forum been written-off by spammers?

Have they won, and I have lost?

Supposing that I just left them all on there to continue piling up... Would my forum eventually jam solid, and become completely unusable due to the amount of user registrations?

Its currently at 9980 accounts as I write this.

The date I wrote this was 20th April 2008.

Give it one week, and the amount of accounts will have exceeded the 10, 000 mark.

At what point would the forum jam solid?

15, 000?
20, 000?
25, 000?
30, 000?

This is not looking good. While I may be able to keep a lid on the quantity of spam threads being made, deleting over 9000 accounts one-by-one is near impossible, especially if they're being added all the time! Sad

-BoomBoxDeluxe

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PirateScoobs · Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 4:16 am Post subject:

Here is idea. Make all forums private under forum permissions. Now make a user group that hahs the permissions to see these private forums. Add those 100 or so trusted users. Now instead of deleting 10000 users you justhave to add 100 to a user group. The users not in the user group will not have a forum to post in. If a newly joined member wants to join the chat they can PM you and you cann a dd them. Wink

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Jordan (PirateScoobs)

Ales · Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 11:29 am Post subject:

Or you could just set the activation level at "admin". The spam users won't be activated then and won't be able to post.

Or, looking at your forum, you could make a new forum. You could copy the < 300 posts and start over. In the beginning there's usually less spammers on a forum, so you could just delete one as he registers - it won't ever get to 10,000 then. Wink

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Silvershark · COM Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 133

I agree with Ales, it will probably be easier just to create a new forum and transfer the posts across rather than delete all the spam members.

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gg'ssimon · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 4:16 am Post subject:

BoomBoxDeluxe wrote:

At what point would the forum jam solid?

It won't, so don't worry about about having thousands of registrants in the member list. This support forum had thousands that I and other staff spent hours deleting.

Sadly, there is no mass delete function, as was said, so you need to delete registrants you do not want one-by-one. Or, just leave them. It does no harm.

The spam registrants never activate accounts, because they are not humans to go look at an email message and then click the activation link. They are computer programs called "spambots". All phpBB forums wind up with them.

Since they do not activate their fake account registrations, it does no use to make private groups or to set member activation to "Admin". All they are are names in a member list, nothing more.

There is no real point in starting a new forum.

What you can do to greatly cut back on further spambot registrations is to follow my advice in the following post, of adding certain words to the "disallow names" list, and to ban certain email extentions:

Only registered users can see links on this forum!
Register or Login on forum!

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Margaret /gg'ssimon~ForumUp World-Wide Administrator

rosyred · Member Joined: 24 Apr 2008 Posts: 1

Hi everyone,

I have just joined and would like to help in anyway that I can, but I am completely lost with all whats going on.

I would like to join a group in some way and have discussions but how do I get involved.

Each time I have entered the chat rooms there is no one there.

So if anyone could enlighten me, I would gladly help.

Laughing

gg'ssimon · Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2008 6:43 am Post subject: Re: Help

rosyred wrote:

Hi everyone,

I have just joined and would like to help in anyway that I can, but I am completely lost with all whats going on.

I would like to join a group in some way and have discussions but how do I get involved.

Each time I have entered the chat rooms there is no one there.

So if anyone could enlighten me, I would gladly help.

Laughing

What are you talking about? There is no chat room on this support forum.

If you are interested in joining a forum, go to our main directory page and look to see which forum you might wish to join.

Only registered users can see links on this forum!
Register or Login on forum!

_________________
Margaret /gg'ssimon~ForumUp World-Wide Administrator