Miles is a jerk and CTTF is off putting. 🤢

I see no evidence of bot activity in howtocrackchef. Just now Daniel made a new rule, no jibberish posts will be tolerated, ok. Previously the rule seemed to be "use the forum as we see fit, no profanity". That includes unfortunately drunken posts, in that case I would rule them not spamming, but disruptive and troll like. Still, I had a conversation with the last so called bot, it was deleted it seemes, but in that exchange was an ADMISSION of drunk posting. So I got more done by interacting with primitive grunt than could otherwise be accomplished, and obtained proof [to my skill and experience] that primitive grunt was not using automatic posting software or otherwise producing software generated posts in that one clear case. Then that case study was deleted despite the rule "use the forum as we see fit, no profanity". Is there some other list of rules somewhere I've missed? Thanks for pointing it out if so. Daniel's opinion about the matter at the time cannot just be the rule! Make a set of rules and publish them!

The idea a user can just be disruptive, repetitive, or producing gibberish, does not make them a bot. Just because a bot is throwing posts at CTTF trying to get that "new" username approved doesn't mean that a human can't step in and take over once it does get through the door. There is no heavy door here at freeforums, a human can just signup, login, and post, it would make much more sense for bot activity to infiltrate sneakily and build a number of accounts discretely, rather than test out bot software someone wrote in a weekend producing gibberish and empty replies. THe exception would be enormous amounts of post that merely bog down moderation, like over 20 posts in a short period of time.

The evidence for ALL disruptive posts, primitive grunt, and now howtocrackchef is drunken posting to me. I have a theory there is one user with more than one account, but without some backend data like where the posts are originating I can't build up any more evidence. Josh was able to, he could spot people from the same IP address using multiple user names and although that was never explicitly prohibited [in the rules published] it resulted in those accounts being blocked at least once in my experience.

Yeah, really. Get real!!!

You must be hard up for friends if you're actually going to defend a bot-like commenter. Reminds me of that line in a song where the guy is so lonely he says; "Lucky me, now I'm set. Little bug for a pet".

Well, somebody's gotta put their foot down. At least Daniel has a handle on it.

SUGGESTION to Daniel. Have a thread for TRASH or NONSENSE or the like and put stuff like the nonsense from HowToCrackChef there and put a link to the TRASH location of the post in place of the nonsense message. That way, anyone who's curious what message got trashed can go there and decide if they agree or not that it's trash. And the messages in the TRASH/NONSENSE thread should have links back to the original location for those who may peruse the T/N thread. Is that too much work for you?

As for the topic of this thread, Miles & others are indeed jerks to some extent, but also pretty savvy in many cases. I call a lot of people names, including myself and God and my GF etc. Maybe we should have a thread to practice productive name calling.

I don't think the cttf censor-bot is very smart. That would be giving Josh too much credit. I think it really is a spam filter, just a poorly programmed one that produces way too many false positives.

That is not to say I trust Josh. He claimed he doesn't know how to set up a message board and needs someone to show him how. So he can set up Wordpress but not Proboards? He can't Google it and figure it out? He is either stupid or lying, and he sure doesn't seem stupid.

If anyone has Maria's e-mail, I'd suggest contacting her directly and asking her to post her comments here. Posting a link on cttf risks bringing all the bots and agents here.