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New anti-spam measures (if you have 0 posts, read this!)


Pleeb

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Recently, there's been a new kind of spam on the forums.  Bad actors would sign up to tulpa.info, never post, but quietly edit their About Me and Signature to point to nasty sites or promote products.  Then, they would spam links to their tulpa.info profiles on other websites to indirectly have search engines pass through their profiles to those sites.  This has not only been difficult for us to track down, but it has been hurting our rankings too.  We initially just made all profiles hidden from guests, which means the search engines would just 404 when going to these links, but in the long term, we're going to have a few other measures put place.

 

First, I've modified the robots.txt and our sitemap not to index profiles.  This should prevent any webcrawlers from indexing profiles while still allowing guests to view them.  I don't know if this is going to be permanent or not because this will remove profiles from the search listings for better or worse.

 

Second, starting in April, anyone with 0 posts will be unable to edit their signature or "About Me" page.  If you have zero posts (for example, you have a linked accounted and only post in the Lounge), please post in an on-topic board or introduction before April.  You can reply to this announcement, make an introduction (see below), contribute in General Discussion, etc.  Just please do that in the next two weeks.

 

I'm also going to modify the PM that I send out to new news when they sign up, asking them to make an introduction or post in one of the on-topic boards to unlock the ability to edit the profiles.

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

An image in a signature behind a hidden tag! 

image.png.4b4fd4a211261c307de1fb4de85312d6.png

 

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Not sure if I 100% understood but requiring one post to edit profile might be ok. I might suggest that locked out accounts can pm a moderator to be unlocked if it's a problem?

Darron: Host 💍 

Jaina: Tulpa 💍 

(Raccoon Queen 🦝👸)

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦Dain and Nova

Aggrok: Tulpa Void Dragon

Viktor: 🐺

[DeviantArt]

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After April, if you have zero posts you will not be able to edit your signature or About Me. However, if you make a single post you will again.

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An image in a signature behind a hidden tag! 

image.png.4b4fd4a211261c307de1fb4de85312d6.png

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

I'm starting the move.  It will take a while, so it may say that you're a "New Member" when you actually aren't.  Within the next few hours you'll end up being in the "Member" group again.  Don't worry, even if it says you're a "New Member" you can still access your signature until we're finally done this move.

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An image in a signature behind a hidden tag! 

image.png.4b4fd4a211261c307de1fb4de85312d6.png

 

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This update wiped all past "Activity" off the forum by the way, both from Activity feeds (like our View Today's Posts) and profiles

Hi guys, plain text is just me now! We've each got our own accounts: me, Tewi, Flandre, and Lucilyn. We're Luminesce's tulpas.

Here's our "Ask Thread", and here's our Progress Report (You should be able to see all of our accounts on the second page if you want)

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Looks like I had to rebuild the search index, it should be working now.  Sorry about that!

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An image in a signature behind a hidden tag! 

image.png.4b4fd4a211261c307de1fb4de85312d6.png

 

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