Afterdawn sinking under weight of spam.

[sambat]

I don't know if anyone else has noticed that 'Afterdawn', a one time busy clearinghouse for video Q&A seems to be plugged with spam and spammers.
The Mods are battling valiantly to suppress it, but the owners of the site seem disinterested.
Many of the long time responders seem to have given up too.
RIP.

[davexnet]

Agree, myself and many others have made suggestions on their site comments section,
but the comments have largely been ignored.

[PuzZLeR]

Ahh a classic case. You love a site for networking, chatting, discussion, forum-ing, etc then all of a sudden it's inundated with spammers, bots, even viruses too. It makes the trolls look like angels.

Then, as a user, or even long-time user, you start to lose interest after a while since it becomes increasingly more, and more annoying. And then before you know it, you're no longer using it.

Such nuisances are very much like Internet locust - they buzz in to a fresh field, suck any resources and leave it rendered sick, useless and full of disease.

What assists, and oils this plague through, I suspect, is also bribery. But owners have to realize it will indeed be the end of their site, and the extra money will not be worth it. Just look at Internet history.

I feel bad for AfterDawn now. I too smell RIP if this continues out of control and gets worse.

[nic2k4]

It's a real shame, but the real culprits are the "innocents" that click links served by spammers. Spam is still around because someone is making money at it. If one in every thousand viewing results in a click and payment to the spammer, why stop, it's easy money with a minimum of effort. It's the same with telemarketers that disregard do not call lists. People have to realize, no matter how appealing the offer, they can't trust someone who can't follow a simple law or a site's rules.

[lordsmurf]

Some sites don't seem to grow or change with the times, which is why they die.
A sub-forum for ratDVD, for example --- seriously? The only post in the past 4 months was a piece of spam.
(Although I'd also point out that THIS forum still has a spot for VCDEasy in an age where VCD died a half-decade ago, and had 1 post this year, 2 last year, 5 the year before, etc. Time to kill that one, maybe?)
They're simply stuck in 2003, I think.

Sometimes it's just crap organization. Really, three forms for blank media?

Or the tendency to become a "content mill" that simply reposts news from actual sources, and does not create content of their own. From a cursory glance, Afterdawn has become this as well. (Myce did that too, when they turned into Myce.)

Indeed, money can play a factor, but it's a trap.

[redwudz]

VCD's still have a foothold in some Asian countries where a box of CDs can be bought for less than the price of a DVD. But I suspect even there it's use is dying because of the internet and availability of better formats like MKV that can fit a hour or two of video on a CD with better quality than VCD. ratDVD always seemed to me to be a solution when there was no problem.

I agree though, some internet sites are like wading though a minefield to find useful content with all the pop-ups, spam and blatant, 'in your face', advertising.

[budwzr]

The Asians are using "Real" now. I remember when Real was dying here in US and the site became loaded with all kinds of adware and spyware trojans. I guess they sold it out too before heading overseas.

[AlanHK]

The Asians are using "Real" now. I remember when Real was dying here in US and the site became loaded with all kinds of adware and spyware trojans. I guess they sold it out too before heading overseas.

There are still plenty of VCDs sold in Asia.

In Hong Kong, while the bootleg market went over to DVD years ago, since a blank DVD costs the same as a blank CDR, the legal VCDs as are still cheaper than legal DVDs. I guess the licensing for a VCD release is lower than for DVD.

But the only use I have for VCD software now is when extracting a video, or maybe audio, to convert to other formats.

From the posts we see here, it seems there is still a market for VCD in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka where they have evolved unusual formats that play on hardware VCD players, but resist copying.

And online, yes it seems a lot of Chinese movies are available in RMVB, as it is highly compact and well supported -- some DVD players support it directly.

[Large_Pudding]

The Asians are using "Real" now. I remember when Real was dying here in US and the site became loaded with all kinds of adware and spyware trojans. I guess they sold it out too before heading overseas.

I've heard this is the case with many other apps / outputs.
I really can't see how spamming / bots can gain anything from forum's?
I myself admin a forum to which is inundated with bot accounts... completely pointless as it's just a name O_o

[fritzi93]

[QUOTE=AlanHK;2034847]

From the posts we see here, it seems there is still a market for VCD in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka where they have evolved unusual formats that play on hardware VCD players, but resist copying.

Yeah, I had a devil of a time with a VCD of my sister's Egypt tour group. I finally got the video (with ISOBuster) and authored to DVD-Video, but never figured out how they made it so difficult to copy.

[Large_Pudding]

[off topic very slightly]
Since posting to this thread .. via the forum to which I admin I have had to remove 16 unique spam accounts within the past 48 hours! ... it's weird as suddenly there is an influx.. the forum in question is only small with 600+ users .... blimey.. to think of one with 100s of thousands?!
It's such a shame.

[PuzZLeR]

We used to take care of spam, and even offensive content, on the DivX forums regularly. It's also amazing what sick stuff was posted sometimes.

But with the odd post, we weren't that strict. If we deemed some of it was indeed helpful to the community, particulary with DivX, or video in general, we would retain it - but with "Advertisement" edited at the beginning. It did depend, but a couple would pass.

(Still hoping they re-open the DivX Forums sometime soon. It's been over a year they're being "updated".)

@Large_Pudding: If not confidential, can I ask which forum you Admin?

[jman98]

Yeah, I had a devil of a time with a VCD of my sister's Egypt tour group. I finally got the video (with ISOBuster) and authored to DVD-Video, but never figured out how they made it so difficult to copy.

If you're really curious you can look at the older postings the Authoring (VCD/SVCD) forum, but I seem to recall it being 2 possibilities. It may be both or just one by the way. They put deliberately corrupted sectors on the disc (ARCCOS uses this on DVDs) and corrupt the table of contents on the disc. There are some older threads that do discuss various methods used in India to try to protect VCDs from copying and posts on ways around them. I'd start with the more recent postings and work my way back if I was you.

[marioval]

VCD's still have a foothold in some Asian countries where a box of CDs can be bought for less than the price of a DVD. But I suspect even there it's use is dying because of the internet and availability of better formats like MKV that can fit a hour or two of video on a CD with better quality than VCD. ratDVD always seemed to me to be a solution when there was no problem.

I agree though, some internet sites are like wading though a minefield to find useful content with all the pop-ups, spam and blatant, 'in your face', advertising.

I dont want to speak for lordsmurf but I don't think his point was that no one uses VCD. I think his point was no one comes to this site for VCD related issues so why have it. McDonalds didn't get rid of the McPizza because people don't eat pizza, they got rid of it because no one goes to McDonalds for pizza.

[Large_Pudding]

@PuzZLeR
The forum is a small community based online gaming forum... basically our Officers Mess as it were http://www.m2s.forumup.co.uk
The weird thing is; I'm also a member of another.forumup domain forum and they too have seen the influx.
I've managed to limit several ip's however more are coming.

I believe in my case however it's due to the forum based on phpbb #2 to which has known security flaws... it's free, so I can't complain
Apologies having gone slightly off topic lads

[Ai Haibara]

McDonalds had pizza?

As far as I've seen, the main goal of the spammers/bots who flood the forums and blogs (comment sections, etc.) is simply to game the search engines. Oh, sure, there may be someone stumbling across the spam buried deep in a forum somewhere who thinks, "Wow, that's just what I need!". But the search engine bots are checking the forums all the time, and the more references those bots find to a product/site/whatever, their search engine ranking goes up. So when someone searches Google or Yahoo for a DVD ripper...

So, it doesn't matter if the admins remove the posts five minutes later. If the searchbots have already seen it, they've achieved their goal.

[olyteddy]

McDonalds had pizza?

As far as I've seen, the main goal of the spammers/bots who flood the forums and blogs (comment sections, etc.) is simply to game the search engines. Oh, sure, there may be someone stumbling across the spam buried deep in a forum somewhere who thinks, "Wow, that's just what I need!". But the search engine bots are checking the forums all the time, and the more references those bots find to a product/site/whatever, their search engine ranking goes up. So when someone searches Google or Yahoo for a DVD ripper...

So, it doesn't matter if the admins remove the posts five minutes later. If the searchbots have already seen it, they've achieved their goal.

Exactly. With enough SEO even the 'Turnip Twaddler'* could become a respectable product...

*...A major failing of Opus is his inability to resist the temptations of television infotainment commercials, a la Ronco, with the result being that he is frequently seen receiving crateloads of useless and arcane kitchen utensils such as "turnip twaddlers"...

[PuzZLeR]

Looks sweet!

[PuzZLeR]

... looks like I'm a spammer now ...

[sambat]

Afterdawn now seems 90% a Console site, with spam, video, and a 'Tech Support' section seemingly devoted to trolls and nutbars, making up the remainder.
Most of the regulars seem to have deserted.