How many people play Angband?

[sethos]

Yeah, The password took me a google search and Realizing which word meant friend. A bit frustrating, but 2-3 minutes and 5-6 attempts made it all work out.
Sorry, Haven't watched LOTR for years now (Please don't crucify me!)

[Derakon]

The effort is greatly appreciated. Thanks for keeping the boards clean, Pav.

[pav]

I've been promptly deleting everything they posted and banning them, and then suddenly they quit trying.

I think spammers are way more organized than any of us likes to admit.

[Timo Pietilä]

I have added alternative answer in plain English.

As for moderators - as of recently things are quiet on the spamming front. If things get busy during my offline hours, I will happily recruit help from overseas.

I don't know how you keep the spammers off the forum, but I haven't seen any spam here. Spambot smart enough to figure out right answer to that question should be able to post as well.

Anyway, good job keeping forum clean.

[pav]

I have added alternative answer in plain English.

As for moderators - as of recently things are quiet on the spamming front. If things get busy during my offline hours, I will happily recruit help from overseas.

[fizzix]

I didn't know about the registration question. I'd vote for removing it or replacing it with some standard captcha.

Another option is to give more people access to remove posts. There are a bunch of us who visit several times a day, and we can manually remove spam messages.

[debo]

I thought it was a bit unconventional, but more or less acceptable. Someone might want to tune it to accept both 'mellon' and 'friend' though.

That would be awesome.

[Jazerus]

I thought it was a bit unconventional, but more or less acceptable. Someone might want to tune it to accept both 'mellon' and 'friend' though.

[debo]

I glad I got in before the process got complicated. I could see myself taking a guess or two and then saying "screw it" and moving on. Although I read the books (back in the day) and more recently have seen the movies, and am familiar with the portion of the story being referenced, I have no recollection of, and would never guess "mellon" regardless of what the question is.

That pretty much just happened to me. To be honest, I don't give a rat's ass about Tolkein anymore, and I read the books umpteen years ago. When I wrote 'friend' a few times and was still denied, I figured that either the riddle was harder than I thought, or the board had gone rogue and no adminstrator was babysitting anymore. Finally, I just thought a bit more about it, and managed to get the answer.

Sorry guys, as a new member who is harshly addicted to Angband, I think that registration question is incredibly stupid.

[buzzkill]

I glad I got in before the process got complicated. I could see myself taking a guess or two and then saying "screw it" and moving on. Although I read the books (back in the day) and more recently have seen the movies, and am familiar with the portion of the story being referenced, I have no recollection of, and would never guess "mellon" regardless of what the question is.

[BlueFish]

Well, having just gone through the registration, it isnt really clear that you are being asked. Here's my experience... it just says "random question" and a bunch of quenya underneath not in the same box, and without a question mark. It just looked like a comment or quenya quote rather than a question, so I presumed that the text box was a place for me to put in a security question, so I did one. Got confused. Guessed it must be a question, remembered my tolkien, put in "friend". That still didnt work. Sighed. Did a google search again....

(I expect I'm not alone in this)

It took me a while to understand what they were asking. It's a really objectionable registration process and I'm pretty sure it's keeping people from registering who would like to discuss Angband. Keeping spammers out is not worth that price.

It's used in absurd ways too - if you forget your password, it asks you that question, as if it was your personal security question.

[GeoffHill]

You don't have to remember it. All you have to remember is how the Gandalf and Pippin (or was it Merry) figured it out. It's in the writing. Instead of saying "password" you just say the word in the wall.

I didn't think that is hard to figure out.

I dunno.. it took Gandalf ages...

[relic]

You don't have to remember it. All you have to remember is how the Gandalf and Pippin (or was it Merry) figured it out. It's in the writing. Instead of saying "password" you just say the word in the wall.

I didn't think that is hard to figure out.

Continuing OT: I had also problems with the question, mainly because I haven't read Tolkien or LotR. (Although I have seen the films, at least the first two.) So, how many Angband players besides me have also not read LotR? Not too many I would guess.

[pav]

It is, the wording and everything, taken straight from the book.

And for the record, I am also dismayed about how quickly spammers learned how to get past it.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think most people would try "friend" in English. I certainly did, and made many frustrated attempts with changing the capitalisation, writing the translation of the question, etc. before it finally occurred to me to Google the Elvish answer. LoTR readers certainly remember "speak friend and enter", but I think very few would actually remember the word "mellon".

You don't have to remember it. All you have to remember is how the Gandalf and Pippin (or was it Merry) figured it out. It's in the writing. Instead of saying "password" you just say the word in the wall.

I didn't think that is hard to figure out.