Outside links of interest forum?

[Polyidos]

It's certainly great to see the fruits of Jeff's labor on the site upgrade, but I couldn't help but notice that the "Outside links of interest" forum is AWOL. Are all those posts history, or is there still a chance that they will reappear? I saw a post indicating that the forum was "locked", or at least unable to accept new posts prior to the upgrade. I certainly hope that the evil spammers did not corrupt the database to such an extent that all the posts are lost.

I bookmarked some of the links, but not all the ones of interest to me, so I hope that we have not been deprived of the wonderful resource which the sum total of postings to the forum represented. Any information about this?

Thanks.

[Jeff Tirey]

Hi Polyidos,

I locked the forum to control spam. They are not lost. I need to go through all the posts and ensure they are not spam - most are not. I don't know if I will continue that board or not without moderation help because in this day and age of link building, the board is a bit of a liability.

I'm almost done cleaning all spam accounts. There were about 500 and I have about 80 more profiles I need to review.

thanks,
Jeff

[Polyidos]

I locked the forum to control spam. They are not lost. I need to go through all the posts and ensure they are not spam - most are not. I don't know if I will continue that board or not without moderation help because in this day and age of link building, the board is a bit of a liability.

I'm glad to hear that all is not lost in the forum, and you also have my sympathy in dealing with the scourge of spammers. It seems every Internet venue which permits public posting is being inundated with these worthless entries. It's really unfortunate that such thoughtless, selfish behavior might deprive the Textkit community of a valuable resource which, after all, embodies the key vision of the World Wide Web: hyperlinks. The fact that the "bad guys" harvest them in an attempt to locate more vulnerable sites is rather sad, really.

I understand your concerns and your cautious approach to dealing with these issues. Whatever course of action you choose, I am still grateful for everything you have done to advance the cause of Classical Studies. In fact, I am a current beneficiary in that I am a participant in the Pharr-E study group, now in its eleventh month of advancing through Pharr's textbook, at Lesson XLV.

Thanks again for all your efforts.