Winter Cleanup Operation! (part 2)

The first part of the operation consisted on sending a message to all members regarding their accounts being moved to a deactivated state where wouldn't be able to post anywhere else except at the "hello world" section


This is a safety measure to avoid previously registered sleeping spam bot members to suddenly awake and spam all topics as they can.

Unfortunately, due to the server conditions, the initial message didn't reached everyone and therefore was not possible to proceed with the cleanup.

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This time we're going forward with this cleanup. A newsletter was resent earlier today and I've redirected all email-errors messages that mean that a given email has bounced back.

First step is to clean up these accounts and move them to the "deactivated" group.

Not a single member account will be deleted!

The idea is just to move them somewhere safe for everyone in the forum.

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As I speak, already over 2800 messages bounced back so this is still going to take a good while until I can safely move them all to the proper location.

This is a slow process since I need to open each email message, grab the address and run the adequate mysql query by hand.

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Unfortunately, while I was trying to figure a way to move these accounts based on the email address, I made an error and moved all members into the deactivated group.

I've quickly moved everyone back into members group, but will take a few hours until everyone is back on it's original group - sorry for any inconvenience this situation might bring in the meanwhile.

Hopefully today or tomorrow, things get back to normal.

Today, over 300 members were moved to the "Deactivated category", still missing about 1800 to clean up.

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Based on this list of people that doesn't receive the newsletter and the respective server outputs an error message I'm placing these members one by one at this new category.

It's a long process as mentioned before but I wanted to keep you updated on the current progress.

Some members don't have any fault as their ISP marked boot-land's IP as a spam entry and blocks any new messages, this was the case for Amalux's email box and a few other ones.

Luckily, it's possible to get in contact with these services to solve this situation and remove our server IP from their list.

Still, a lot of these members are clearly spam members.

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How to Help?


I need the help of other members to solve possible cases where a mistake is made and an active member is placed on this "Deactivated" category.

You can help by reporting back whenever you see an active member whose category is now "Deactivated" instead of "script developer", "Advanced member" or even normal "Member". Just send write something on this topic and an admin will be able to fix things up.



I'm working solely with emails and have no idea about the respective member's username or posts here in the forum. I've already spotted Amalux's and TheHive's mailboxes on this situation but there are many other members that might also be placed under this category by mistake.

Thank you!