The phpBB Development and Management Teams met in Cologne, Germany last week for 4 days of exciting brainstorming and coding.

We discussed future phpBB releases and worked on phpBB 3.0.6. Our plans for 3.0.6 have previously been discussed on this blog, but we decided to add even more. One feature we decided upon and implemented during the meeting was PM reports. This feature allows users to report private messages to moderators just like posts. A reported private message will then appear in a new MCP module so moderators can read the message and act upon it. This is particularly useful for users who want to report spam PMs. From this feature emerged another: emptying a user’s outbox. This option, in the Manage Users section of the ACP, allows the deletion of all unread PMs sent by a spammer.

Yet another idea we had during the meeting, which has already been announced, is the Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition. I would like to urge all MOD developers to participate in this competition since a large variety of CAPTCHAs is the most effective measure against spammers. With the new CAPTCHA API, creating a CAPTCHA plugin is really simple. The example Q&A CAPTCHA Plugin, which will ship with phpBB 3.0.6, was also created during the meeting.

Details of the decisions made regarding the future of phpBB will be published in separate blog posts over the next several weeks, so make sure to check back for news! Of course, the meeting was also a great opportunity for us to get to know each other better. Most of us had already met at Londonvasion last year, but it was great to catch up with everyone again! We visited the Chocolate Museum and climbed the tower of the Cologne Cathedral. All in all, we had lots of fun too. During the meeting, we were happy to invite bantu to join the Development Team.

View from the cathedral

Team at work

Chocolate fountain

Andreas (bantu), Dominik (dhn), front: Jim (TerraFrost), back: Nils (naderman), Meik (Acyd Burn), Marek (APTX), Chris (ToonArmy), Henry (kellanved), Carolina, Yuriy (Marshalrusty), Igor (evil<3)

This post no longer reflects the state of the art. See here .

CAPTCHAs – “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”s – are known as the foremost means to stop registrations by SPAM programs, so-called “Bots”. In phpBB, a visual confirmation CAPTCHA is used.

The key here is the “Completely Automated” part, meaning that the software – phpBB – creates the question and the correct answer without interaction by a user. This has the drawback that computers are usually able to find the answer as well, given time to adjust. This is an active field in research. In the end it is an arms race. A new CAPTCHA will usually buy a few months of peace, before the major Bot vendors adjust their products.

This article is about presenting some reasons behind our CAPTCHAs; it is not intended to be a case for or against CAPTCHAs in general or particular. It is not about other means to combat SPAM, but only about CAPTCHAs.

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