Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

I logged in to see a huge hideous mess.

Is there anyone steering the ship, or has this forum been taken over by evil bots?

VSE's founder is no longer running the site and the new admin doesn't take an active interest/reply to messages/seem to care. We can't add new mods without admin privileges, most of the mods who are active don't have the ability to ban people or do anything outside the forum they moderate so basically VSE is slowly dying.

What a shame.

Thanks for the update.

I just hate it when that happens, shame that anyone with full admin priv. can't actually pass the details on. I know it is a minefield of who to trust, but I think a quick scan over previous posts would identify a few candidates. The spam attacks are just mindless done by people who don't deserve a place in society!

I might not know my left from my right here...

If the VSE site is dying, is it possible to set up another site from new... run by moderators who are active on this site.... maybe have a vintage synth page and a contemporary synth page.

Most of the info on each synth is either public domain or just editorial 1st person opinion so I don't think there would be much/any copyright infringement.

This site is a fantastic encyclopedia of knowledge and it would be terrible if it suddenly disappeared.

I dont know the logistics or expense of putting this plan into action but there are many of us who use this site (especially the forums) ... maybe there could be a kickstarter to raise funds?

Sure, another site could be started, but the 10+ years of membership and posts would all be lost. I wonder if there's a way to bypass forum Admin, and contact the server admin directly.

This is my favourite synth site, the only one I'm registered and in which I contribute, what makes VSE different and unique is that here I always find competent advices from real users/owners of the synth I am asking of, and not useless opinions based on some youtube videos (as it happens often on other websites), and I like the sense of community that I find here, so it'll be very very sad for me if VSE will die due to spam attacks

It's called Cyber Terrorism, with the goal of spreading fear and apathy via the internet and to disrupt the free exchange of ideas and information. I don't give a s**t and will continue to use the forums normally.

From what I can gather from the subject lines, they're advertising some Korean casino thing... though what that has to do with synthesizers I can't begin to imagine...

Maybe it would be possible to have some kind of pop quiz before you can register a username on here, surely the spammers won't know a minimoog from a casio.

Hybrid88 wrote:Maybe it would be possible to have some kind of pop quiz before you can register a username on here, surely the spammers won't know a minimoog from a casio.

Unfortunately, no one with the ability to make these changes is actually steering this ship, so the forum is going to sail where it goes, probably slowly sinking all the time...

desmond wrote:

Hybrid88 wrote:Maybe it would be possible to have some kind of pop quiz before you can register a username on here, surely the spammers won't know a minimoog from a casio.

Unfortunately, no one with the ability to make these changes is actually steering this ship, so the forum is going to sail where it goes, probably slowly sinking all the time...

a number of years back I inherited a forum that was having a lot of spam issues. I ended up migrating off of PHPBB to SMF. It seems PHPBB is so old its very difficult to secure. My SMF board hasn't had any spam issues since I migrated. Unfortunately without the admin to get a DB dump there is not much you can do other than play "Nearer My God To Thee" on your Jupiter 8 as she sinks into the ocean.

abruzzi wrote:Unfortunately without the admin to get a DB dump there is not much you can do other than play "Nearer My God To Thee" on your Jupiter 8 as she sinks into the ocean.

What? ... no deck chairs overboard first??

I deleted 8 pages of spam from general yesterday and today. It seems to start at about 3 am GMT until they get banned. I will continue to remove it and maybe they will give up.