OFF TOPIC THREAD: Where derailing the thread is impossible!

[Nospike]

Thought I'd shamelessly plug my youtube channel where I've begun uploading bass covers mainly of old rock songs.
Here's some Black Sabbath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKgdwxMz0uE
And here's a Cream tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtdVEuP2h6M
There'll be more, so sub if you like and stay tuned (no pun intended)!

[Benvolio]

What a delight! Two of the best bands! And for each, one of my absolute favourites of their numbers.

Lovely fluid, laid back melodic baseline playing, liked and subscribed!

[Nospike]

Thanks Benvolio, glad you like the song choice especially. These recordings are my way of expressing my love for the deep cuts.

[entropicdecay]

There should be a Mad Mushroom emoji

[Keening_Product]

There should be a Mad Mushroom emoji

I could have sworn there was one in the old EmotiKeen Roundup Thread, but either it was lost to netrot over the last decade or we truly need development here.

What vibe do you want it to have? Context for use?

[entropicdecay]

I'm not sure. Just kinda felt like there should be one, but there's no obligation.

[Quillax]

Am I the only one who feels that the quote boxes blend in too much with the posts? Back when we had the previous custom skin, before Fleexy took over (example), the quote boxes were white and had dark grey lettering, making it easy to not mix up the quotes with the author's actual writings.

Here's how a quote box looks right now:

Commander Keen: Marooned on Mars is the first episode in the Commander Keen games. In this episode, aliens from the planet Vorticon VI find out about the eight-year-old genius and plan his destruction. While Keen is out exploring the mountains of Mars, the Vorticons steal vital parts of his ship and take them to distant Martian cities! The four parts are the Joystick (for manual flight control), the Car Battery (for electrical systems power), the Vacuum Cleaner (reworked as an ion propulsion unit) and the Everclear (alcohol for fuel) — see Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket for details. Keen must explore the planet, fight the Martians and their Butler Robots and Tank Robots, find the members of this Vorticon outpost and wrest the parts back from their wicked, clawed hands!

And here's what it would look like with a white background and slightly lighter lettering:



Thoughts?

[Soul Monster]

Am I the only one who feels that the quote boxes blend in too much with the posts? Back when we had the previous custom skin, before Fleexy took over (example), the quote boxes were white and had dark grey lettering, making it easy to not mix up the quotes with the author's actual writings.

Here's how a quote box looks right now:

Commander Keen: Marooned on Mars is the first episode in the Commander Keen games. In this episode, aliens from the planet Vorticon VI find out about the eight-year-old genius and plan his destruction. While Keen is out exploring the mountains of Mars, the Vorticons steal vital parts of his ship and take them to distant Martian cities! The four parts are the Joystick (for manual flight control), the Car Battery (for electrical systems power), the Vacuum Cleaner (reworked as an ion propulsion unit) and the Everclear (alcohol for fuel) — see Bean-with-Bacon Megarocket for details. Keen must explore the planet, fight the Martians and their Butler Robots and Tank Robots, find the members of this Vorticon outpost and wrest the parts back from their wicked, clawed hands!

And here's what it would look like with a white background and slightly lighter lettering:



Thoughts?

Now that you mention it, yeah, the quote boxes definitely don't stand out in a post as much as they could. Sometimes posts can get pretty lengthy, so it can be easy for quotes to get lost in the shuffle. Seeing a comparison of the current colors vs the custom skin, I think the custom skin looks a lot better because it does create more of a contrast against the grey background instead of just being one solid color. Although, in my opinion, I would opt for black text over a white background. If there is a way to change it, perhaps it could be put to a vote?

[Benvolio]

I'd love to extend a very warm welcome to the hundreds of new joiners of the forum since 11.31 on Sunday the 21st, each joining after another in a remarkably steady stream. All ye who have common first names and unfamiliar surnames comprised of mostly nonsensical fragments of words, and who have not yet posted. I assume many of you are amongst the 99 people currently online. Looking forwards to some fun chats about Commander Keen!

I presume none of this is in any way directly harmful to the forum?

[Quillax]

Now that you mention it, yeah, the quote boxes definitely don't stand out in a post as much as they could. Sometimes posts can get pretty lengthy, so it can be easy for quotes to get lost in the shuffle. Seeing a comparison of the current colors vs the custom skin, I think the custom skin looks a lot better because it does create more of a contrast against the grey background instead of just being one solid color. Although, in my opinion, I would opt for black text over a white background. If there is a way to change it, perhaps it could be put to a vote?

My only concern of the white quote box is that it might get distracting, but if so it might only be temporary as people slowly readjust. I mean, at least the current quote boxes are shifted to the right a bit to leave behind a gap so it's not too bad. A poll could be interesting.

I'd love to extend a very warm welcome to the hundreds of new joiners of the forum since 11.31 on Sunday the 21st, each joining after another in a remarkably steady stream. All ye who have common first names and unfamiliar surnames comprised of mostly nonsensical fragments of words, and who have not yet posted. I assume many of you are amongst the 99 people currently online. Looking forwards to some fun chats about Commander Keen!

I presume none of this is in any way directly harmful to the forum?

Oh, hi there everyone! Welcome to the PCKF, fellow new users! Can't wait to talk about Commander Keen with you all! I'm sorry for not welcoming you all earlier, maybe you should start posting something keen! Don't be so shy!

In all seriousness, I wouldn't worry about it. Looking at the users list, we've been getting these kind of users since 2019. Though, it astounds me that before 2019 we had like 20 pages of users, and now we have about 180(!) pages mostly filled with what I believe are just spambots. According to a post from Keening_Product, it seems that Fleexy has been doing a great job at keeping those bots at check.

[Roobar]

The amount is increasing. They may overload our forum and break it down, so perhaps fleexy should be warned to take some action.

[Quillax]

Good point. If that's the case, maybe Fleexy could prune all of the accounts that have zero posts? That would really cut things down.

[Fleexy]

The amount is increasing. They may overload our forum and break it down, so perhaps fleexy should be warned to take some action.

Having a lot of users registered in the database is mostly harmless - they're just data, like posts. The problems (like slowness or errors about DB connections) happen when bots make a lot of requests at the same time. That's when I need to ban IPs.

The spambot registrations are kind of unsightly, though, so I've updated reCaptcha to v3.

[Nisaba]

The spambot registrations are kind of unsightly, though, so I've updated reCaptcha to v3.

The increased number of spambot registrations has indeed developed into an annoying phenomenon, which even the expansion of the blacklists by several thousand entries could not permanently solve. I am therefore delighted with the reCaptcha update to v3.
I had also thought about proposing a modified Turing test as we know it from Keen 6, in which creatures from the Keen universe have to be correctly recognized... would be a nice gimmick, if implemented right.

[Quillax]

The spambot registrations are kind of unsightly, though, so I've updated reCaptcha to v3.

I checked the members list, and wow; there has been no new users since March 18! That's gotta be a new record, at least since 2019. Looks like the upgrade worked, which surprised me, although I wonder how it'll take for the spambots to figure out a way through this new version of the software.

I had also thought about proposing a modified Turing test as we know it from Keen 6, in which creatures from the Keen universe have to be correctly recognized... would be a nice gimmick, if implemented right.

I remember that before Fleexy took over the hosting, registering users on PCKF were offered some Keen-related creature images, and I believe they had to match the duplicates like in those memory matching card games. On Keen:Modding, I think users had to fill out a few Keen-related questions, such as "What's the word in Three-_____ Lake". I wonder how effective those tests were. I know that spambots weren't so smart back then, but does a uniquely-created test really offer better protection than such a widely-used captcha?