[imported_silkroad]

Originally Posted by skippybosco

@TMH63: .... even in the rare case there is a false positive, your users can still register and post, while at the same time having peace of mind that content is being vetted before it is being presented to your users.

To be clear, and sorry to offend any sensitive developers and their loyal supporters, our experience with this mod was not "the rare case [of] a false positive'. We found many cases of false positives. We only found a "rare care" in that people would not just get angry and never return, because no legitimate users likes to be called a spammer. The "rare cases
are the ones who will take the time to contact board admins and mods after repeated humiliation and rejection. It is very offensive to users to be rejected as a spammer because they wanted a user name called "dantheman" (just an example) and a spammer somewhere in the world has the same name.

By using CAPTCHA and a few simple bot checking programs, we never had a problem with spam prior to installing this mod, we simply installed it to test it (open minded and very eager for it's success). We have since disabled it because of the false positives; and instead of this rule-based system, we installed a very efficient Bayesian Anti Spam classifier we are very happy with. Our statistical system (AI) works much better than a rule-based mod, especially when the rule base is generated by "community" where it is easy to submit anyone to the DB and time consuming to get out of jail.

Finally, we are not trying to "sell anything" and don't want you do download any of our software (we have none), nor do we want to make a name for ourselves, nor do we have any conflict of interest at all. We simply warn our fellow forum friends that community-driven rule-based systems, all of them, not only this one, are well known for false positives, more than well trained statistical based systems.

What the developers are doing is noble and their heart is in the right place. Folks will benefit and many will simply think the system works well as it blocks both spammers and legitimate potential users .... because most blocked legit users will simply leave your forum, silently, and go elsewhere. This is human nature.

In closing, false positives are not rare in rule-based systems like this (community contributed). What is "rare" is for rejected users to take the time to contact your board and explain what happened. Rejected users generally just get angry and go elsewhere. That is a consequence of running a system prone to false positives.

We disabled the mod and did not do it because we were angry, upset or unhappy with the zeal and passion of the supporters here. We disabled it because it does not work for us because too many false positives. Plus, we don't like having registration checks dependent on a third party server up or down, especially when it adds little value to our forums.