Is there no way.....

.... to block all the Bing, Facebook & Google bots? We seem to be getting a bunch of "New Members" that never post or show up as being online. Is it not possible to delete those? I'm pretty sure they're not all here to learn about ARs. I don't want what happened at the old site to happen here!

Terry

I know a little less than nothing about how all this works so rocketfoot will have to chime in here. I do have a few thoughts, however.
Most of the new "members" never activate their accounts so I'd consider them harmless. Between John and I, we ban the spammers pretty quickly. I think that total membership numbers may boost whatever website rankings there are, if so, that doesn't seem like a bad thing.
The Google, bing, etc. bots help direct web searches to this place, making us more likely to be found.
What would really help, in my opinion would be more firearms related content, but I've very little to add in that regard. That would increase the Google/bing etc. web searches to be linked to here, and help get new members with a legitimate interest in the platform to sign up. We sure could use a few like Tackleberry and Augie (God rest his soul) to get things moving better. I think a lot of visitors from web searches look around, find little content, and move on.

I know a little less than nothing about how all this works so rocketfoot will have to chime in here. I do have a few thoughts, however.
Most of the new "members" never activate their accounts so I'd consider them harmless. Between John and I, we ban the spammers pretty quickly.  I think that total membership numbers may boost whatever website rankings there are, if so, that doesn't seem like a bad thing.
The Google, bing, etc. bots help direct web searches to this place, making us more likely to be found.
What would really help, in my opinion would be more firearms related content, but I've very little to add in that regard.  That would increase the Google/bing etc. web searches to be linked to here, and help get new members with a legitimate interest in the platform to sign up. We sure could use a few like Tackleberry and Augie (God rest his soul) to get things moving better.  I think a lot of visitors from web searches look around, find little content, and move on.

I get your point about the lack of enough gun content. I think the problem there is that we don't have enough members from the old place to provide it. Aside from my post about the Fusion barrel, I just haven't done anything gun related worth posting about. I hope to change that in the near future. Having all these fake members worries me. We got hacked too many times before the old place died.

Terry

I don't think the general members have any access to cause damage other than spamming. I remember that Tow truck got hacked at the armory, but strong passwords should lessen the chances of getting our accounts hacked. Speaking of which, rocketfoot changed my password to a pretty easy one. I just hardened it a bit. Forest had recommended 16 or more characters at the armory.

I can barely remember what I had for lunch much less a 16 character password!

Terry

[RocketFoot]

Yeah, there is no need to worry...regular members don't have access to anything critical and we run the latest software with all security upgrades! We'll clean these turkey's out but there isn't much harm that they can do.

Appreciate the time and effort put in to creating and maintaining this site. Evidently, it was doomed from the start.

Not much discussion of guns, ARs, related material. Understandably, there can't be much AR comms left that hasn't been peated and repeated forever and a day.

A few straggler's left over from that Armory site who mostly want to bs about food, booze, travel.

I have seen some other gun sites following the same path

Looks like AR15.com will reign king in spite of those who choose to bash it.

I agree. I was pretty active when I was building a lot, but I post less about guns when I just use them as a tool. I was too busy this summer to shoot trap (but my son and daughter-in-law say we’re shooting Five Stand tonight), and my range trips were great fun but not so compelling to post about. My club stopped the Zombie Shoots and I didn’t do IDPA this summer.

I’m not building right now. I have a couple projects back-burnered for reasons. Like most, I just come to check in with other like-minded folks who own guns and treasure the 2A, but just living life…

I really miss some of the old guys. Some aren’t with us any more- TJ, Augie… and some don’t frequent this site- Greg, Tack, Retcop… so much knowledge and experience. As always, the other site has more active members, but is less… welcoming, less friendly. I don’t go there much any more- just got tired of swimming in a river of beta male testosterone. Same with glocktalk and iowawhitetails. I just can’t take the bragging and belittling.

I agree. I was pretty active when I was building a lot, but I post less about guns when I just use them as a tool. I was too busy this summer to shoot trap (but my son and daughter-in-law say we’re shooting Five Stand tonight), and my range trips were great fun but not so compelling to post about. My club stopped the Zombie Shoots and I didn’t do IDPA this summer.

I’m not building right now. I have a couple projects back-burnered for reasons. Like most, I just come to check in with other like-minded folks who own guns and treasure the 2A, but just living life…

I really miss some of the old guys. Some aren’t with us any more- TJ, Augie… and some don’t frequent this site- Greg, Tack, Retcop… so much knowledge and experience. As always, the other site has more active members, but is less… welcoming, less friendly. I don’t go there much any more- just got tired of swimming in a river of beta male testosterone. Same with glocktalk and iowawhitetails. I just can’t take the bragging and belittling.

TJ is dead 😳😳😰😰😰

Dang, I didn't know that about TJ. What got him?