[Lightstalkers] Invitations

Invitations

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:53:21 +0000

Hi all -- as you may know, we've been attacked by spammers a few times recently. As with email spam, it's a constant arms race with these guys; we upgrade our defenses, and they come up with new ways to circumvent them. We've got all the standard defenses; email validation, IP banning, CSRF, and so on. We also tried CAPTCHA, with little success. It turns out that basically, spammers are simply hiring real people to show up and manually create spam accounts. In light of this, we're going to switch to an invitation system. From now on, new members will have to have an invitation code provided to them by an existing member. http://www.lightstalkers.org/invitations I hope this will be a real solution, which doesn't inconvenience our actual audience too much. If you have any issues with it, just email us at support@lightstalkers.org.

Re: Invitations

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:27:14 +0000

Hi Shinji, Something needs to be done.Think this should work.Applause for all your great work. best wishes, Dev

Re: Invitations

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:01:34 +0000

Invitation only? Now I feel special.

Re: Invitations

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:42:56 +0000

Ahhh...membership has its privileges!

What if somebody finds the site for the first time and wants to join, but does not have any regular contact with a member? Can that person see the profile information and contact an existing member to get an invitation?

Re: Invitations

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:06:41 +0000

I am afraid that invitation-only membership makes this Internet community a privileged club and that is not good in my opinion. How about creating a cool-off period of say a week before a new member can post?

Re: Invitations

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:10:54 +0000

Neal: That's correct, if you want an invite, it's easy enough to ask around. I'm also setting up an invitation request system that I hope will expedite the process. Tomoko: I generally agree, and I'm committed to keeping Lightstalkers open to all. Invitations don't really change anything; any of our 34,000+ members can send invitations to anyone they want. There's no moderation or approval process to slow things down. If anything, we may need to add more steps, to deter spammers. Some Web sites use "the invitation model":http://invites.mashable.com/ to create the *illusion* of exclusivity, but that's not what we're trying to do here. To answer your last question--cooling-off periods cause headaches, since there are many completely legitimate reasons a person would want to post in their first week. Right now we see invitations as lesser inconvenience. We'll keep our options open, though, and I appreciate the idea.

Re: Invitations

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:55:51 +0000

There is absolutely no way that membership by invitation only can avoid exclusivity. I think this will diminish the variety of our members and the quality of our organization.

Re: Invitations

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:11:37 +0000

Can we use those squiggly words that you have to type correctly to protect against either spam or a spammer? I know that Facebook uses them, and it is bound to be an even bigger target than LS.

I really am out of my league here in suggesting a solution, but I too am a little concerned about the exclusivity part.

And practically speaking, if I am contacted by someone seeking membership, and I don't know them, how do I know if they are not potentially a spammer? I get regular Facebook requests for "Friending" from people I don't know, and except for the fact that they may know ten (or fifty) people whom I know and thus I trust them, they could be bad people too. So there are some issues with this.

Having said that, I am willing to let Shinji run this place...I ain't no control freak.

Re: Invitations

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:24:11 +0000

I'm not sure invitations can be gotten without knowing anyone already even if an interested party can fill out an invitation request form. The beauty of this online community is that you can join without prior acquaintance with any members. I was wondering as Neal suggested above if some spam-preventing posting scheme might be tried first. I get an impression that early photographer members knew each other and I am afraid that this community will become as exclusive as the core at the initial stage of this community development.

Re: Invitations

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:12:23 +0000

Neal, what you're talking about is called "CAPTCHA":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha. We did employ this system for about a month; it proved ineffective. It can prevent robot spam, but human spammers find it no challenge. With regard to Facebook, that's a very different situation. Facebook is a very tightly closed network; you're only ever exposed to content created by your "friends". You could compare it to Lightstalkers' "Personal Network":http://www.lightstalkers.org/networks/filter_settings filter. Lightstalkers is much more open than Facebook, and we want to keep it that way. On the downside, it's more fundamentally susceptible to spam. You asked _"if I am contacted by someone seeking membership, and I don’t know them, how do I know if they are not potentially a spammer?"_ I trust your judgment; my guess is that you can be pretty casual about sending invitations. We're receiving invitation requests here, and fulfilling almost all of them. Tomoko, thanks for your feedback. If the invitation system turns out to be detrimental, we'll try something else. If we can find another approach that blocks spam equally well, we'll do that instead… all suggestions are welcome. In the meantime, we can't allow spam in Lightstalkers; every time you *don't* see pharmaceutical spam in the On the Move section, it's because of the invitation process.

Re: Invitations

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:59:11 +0000

Shinji, I don't know when you tried CAPTCHA. I would think if you institute CAPTCHA for the posting step rather than the registering step , human spammers would get tired of spamming. Frequent posters might get annoyed, but.... I go through CAPTCHA every time I post my new ad at Craigslist.

Re: Invitations

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:25:18 +0000

hey shinji, i recently interviewed one of the guys collaborating with these anti-spam crusaders, they're emart as hell: http://www.projecthoneypot.org xo//es

Re: Invitations

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:06:22 +0000

Ok .... Hi ...... a good friend of mine ..... now freelancing in India ..... has asked me for an 'invitation' to join LS. Prob is I can't seem to work out how to do just that! help?? Brian!

Re: Invitations

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:19:00 +0000

On the home page below your personal network there is a box titled "Add a person by name or email address:" Type in the person's email address and he will be sent an invitation to join.

Re: Invitations

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:53:21 +0000

Ta Barry ... V appreciated ........ Brian