Slashdot Mirror
How To Keep a Web Site Local?
Cornwallis writes "The universal accessibility of the Internet is one of its attractions. But what do you do when you don't want your board to be Slashdotted? Back in the day it was great to run a local BBS where friends and neighbors could dial in using their 9600-baud modems to pick up mail or share games or stories. Now, my Web-based board gets slammed by people from all over the world who have no reason to access it, can't possibly take advantage of the locally focused services it offers, and generally take up my time because I have to block their accounts or explain to them why they can't have access. This despite the fact that the board explains quite clearly that it is for local use only and couldn't possibly be of interest to them. Other than putting thousands of entries in my hosts file to block IP ranges, what options do I have to restrict access to locals only? Or isn't that feasible?"
A couple of years ago we started to get a lot of people signing up from China, India, Russia etc and then posting spam. So now, to register with the forum you have to answer a question that requires you have some local knowledge. That gets rid of most automatic signups. And secondly, the accounts are not activated automatically but have to be approved by an administrator. So we delete those with spammy URLs in their signatures ("Buy WOW gold" seems to be a common variety). In a small community, the number of real local people siging up is a few per week. Maybe a couple of spammers get past that in a month, and then their posts and accounts are quickly deleted.
That's a pretty serious problem for filtering based on geography.
No kidding. Basically, anyone who thinks geography-based filtering is a good idea should be shot. Imagine moving 2000 miles, then being told by some braindead webdesigner you can't talk to your friends anymore.