John,
I very, very much appreciate all that you've been doing to keep the Forum site "clean". I thank you profoundly.
Are there any kinds of special "hints" that one can "pick up on", or subtle aspects to a "new member" which may serve as a "giveaway" and differentiate them from legitimate enquiries? Any potential hints would be helpful. Thanks for serving the Forum members as our "watchdog"! 
Reinettes. (Tim.)
Bots have progressed from simple posted statement to using quoting feature and topical responses.
I have to log in twice to gain access here; this would mean a 5-step manual process normally: login*2 + quote + posting + math problem.
Not sure how the bots are doing it. I don't see the same thing on growing fruit org, a more highly trafficked and desirable spam-AI target.
Math problem for this post = 10+11, I ran out of fingers and toes.
Good comments guys!
Because of the possibility of bots threatening to take down web sites it seems the first question is who has the know all to back up the original settings? Once the settings are lost it's lots of engineering down the drain, but the thing is I don't know if it's wordpress or who that may be tasked saving them, and so I ask who it is? .. as in: who's got the top administration spot?
If it's somebody nearby, then let me over and I will teach using you as a client of wordpress how to get the form data saved before disaster. It might work you handing me a temporary handle if it's not a breach to any of us. Either way is fine with me.
I googled the characters :
site:miniorange.com "How to block bot traffic on a WordPress site using Reverse Proxy?"
of which yields that bots can take sites down, but not why?
Just copy over that middle row into google dot com (not other engines) and see what I mean.
Member Idyllwild is the Administrator (not nearby).
From Jafar earlier this year:
"Good timing because we paid for Wordpress support last year, but aren't planning to for this year. Our Webmaster was able to get them to fix this [PMs] before our support subscription ran out."
The Q&A and photos on HOS forum are on average, more fruit-specific than growingFruit site, and
selective reading of HOS site is not as necessary to save time. User-submitted Topic titles here are more specific.
It is good that you have a 5% advantage when ciphering using digits.
Math problem for this post: 2+1, can use one hand, other hand is behind my back.
I kid the Math Required and wonder how effective it is in preventing spam and if there are any server
metrics that track the failed math attempts versus total successful posts.
If the addends had a maximum value of 11, it would only take at maximum 22 attempts for the bot to be correct.
Larry G,
Excellent, provocative points made. Online, we're all vulnerable to bots, hackers, charlatans -- ...what have you....
What to do? This is the new new reality in the online world.
I will leave potential remedies to those who actually have an understanding of this "new-ish", ever more tainted medium. In the meantime, I'll hop back up into my favorite tree and have another banana. They're at their perfect ripeness.
Your primitive HOS member,
Reinettes.
[P.S. -- Larry: I only just noticed that I only have 4 fingers on my right hand. I never noticed that before! That must be why I could do math on a base 10, rather than a base 7....]
Idyllwild
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
John S
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