Xenforo Migration Thread

[DerpyKv]

Hello KronTalk!

I'm starting this thread in order to notify you of our intention to migrate the forum over to Xenforo(from Simple Machines Forum) over the coming weeks. If you have any suggestions with regard to how it should be laid out, or concerns over the migration, please post them here and we will address them accordingly!

 

[hummingbirdography]

Yaaahuuuu!!! This is fantastic news! Hopefully I'll no longer have to wonder if I'm talking to a spam bot ;D

There were a few suggestions on this thread:

Anyone manning the forum?

Nothing but AI bot posts in the past month, possibly some new user filtering is in order?

forum.krontech.ca

I'm not familiar with Xenforo yet, but if it supports it, I think it would be nice to have any of the following (in no particular order):

[list type=decimal]
[*]moderation required for any posts (or edits!) which include a link
[*]captcha for account registration
[*]user mentions & notifications when you're mentioned; i.e. thanks @Kayla!
[*]better code formatters for posts containing python, json, shell commands, etc.
[*]ability to add social media links to your profile such as youtube, instagram, etc.
[*]login/register via OAuth 2.0 (i.e. login with Google)
[*]stronger password requirements
[*]ability to change your username
[*]better presentation of quotes/replies
[*]better presentation of posts with image attachments
[*]ability to insert image attachments in-line within posts
[*]view editing history of posts
[*]in-context rich text editor, i.e. TinyMCE
[*]better emoji support
[*]link preview generation
[*]better organization of direct/personal messages
[*]responsive layout for mobile devices or small screens
[*]web push notifications
[*]a better way for us to share MP4, TIFF, or DNG files captured with a Chronos
[/list]

These are just some ideas! I think this forum is already really great and I'm confident anything you do will be super beneficial.

Thank you Kayla!!!

 

[DerpyKv]

Sounds good, thank you for highlighting some features that you'd like to see. I believe Xenforo supports most of them by default, but I'll add them to the desired features list nonetheless to ensure functionality.

Another priority is also looking at our user registration workflow. Unfortunately due to the advancements in machine vision as of late, Captcha's are becoming less effective preventing malicious actors from registering accounts and making junk-posts. I'm not sure if enabling social-network OAuth provider functionality will improve this to any degree, but that is something to be investigated.

Some of the main features that I'm excited for is its WYSIWYG content editor, enhanced search functionality, improved media presentation as well as it's content focused design. This forum is primarily intended to be a customer knowledge base, so having functionality that leverages the diverse experience that this form holds is paramount.

Kayla

 

[1022mm]

Everything looks great!

I did some reading on Xenforo and found the following that might help with the AI spam bots. It looks like the main way this is dealt with is using the user group functionality of the platform. Each group has its own set of permissions. By default, everyone is in the Registered Users group. You can create a new user group (name it something like New Users) for new users to automatically be placed into when they register. You can apply any restrictions the software allows to this group. Most implementations are putting posts by new users into a quarantined post queue that that each need to be manually approved by a moderator. You can use the "promotion" function to set the user to be automatically moved to the main Registered Users group after a certain number of approved posts have been made.

I could not find a function to block links by new members in the documentation, which is unfortunate. I think the 5-post probationary period for new accounts would likely prevent the vast majority of the spam, though. The bots would have to be really crafty with those first 5 posts to not give themselves away, though as we've seen they've been getting more sophisticated.

 

[DerpyKv]

Everything looks great!

I did some reading on Xenforo and found the following that might help with the AI spam bots. It looks like the main way this is dealt with is using the user group functionality of the platform. Each group has its own set of permissions. By default, everyone is in the Registered Users group. You can create a new user group (name it something like New Users) for new users to automatically be placed into when they register. You can apply any restrictions the software allows to this group. Most implementations are putting posts by new users into a quarantined post queue that that each need to be manually approved by a moderator. You can use the "promotion" function to set the user to be automatically moved to the main Registered Users group after a certain number of approved posts have been made.

I could not find a function to block links by new members in the documentation, which is unfortunate. I think the 5-post probationary period for new accounts would likely prevent the vast majority of the spam, though. The bots would have to be really crafty with those first 5 posts to not give themselves away, though as we've seen they've been getting more sophisticated.

I totally agree with this group system, and considering that we have a little more moderation power as of late, it should be relatively easy to implement. If it becomes too onerous, we can enable functionality that will check all new posts against akismet's spam model to see if that helps.

It is rather interesting though, as it appears that some of the bots will literally just feed the last post in a thread as context into an informative LLM, then post what's returned(with perfect grammar of course) and append whatever link they are trying to promote after it, or not at all. The latter I'm assuming is a trust acquisition strategy.