search security / verification check?

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#1

there is apparently a new security check (image with twisted character verification) when one is not logged in and wants to search the forum… maybe I am just really not with it, but I have never heard about forums getting spamed with searches or scripts that would somehow force them to have to take verfication measures to make it stop?

I like many others have the issue that I get logged out of here after ~10 minutes… so this is annoying for me. As well, I feel this will result in fewer people actually trying to search which seems to get on everyone once in a while and since the search results are kind of only ok anyway, people searching, like I did just now, usually have to perform multiple searches to find exactly what they are looking for considering the breadth of possible key words or terms used to describe a problem.

sign me.
exasperated with the new search security measure on the forum

#2

The real problem here is why are you logged out every 10 minutes?

#3

no, i don’t htink you understood what I was saying, the real problem is that for some reason unknown to me it has been made more difficult to do a search. This feature I suspect will lead to fewer people actually searching and simply annoys me.

Can you say why has this been done, is it some kind of super weird spam attack you are trying to thwart? or is it that you just want to track users habits? or is there some other reason? :confused:

nonetheless, i don’t seem to be alone in this problem of getting logged out:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=71118&highlight=forum+logged

#4

The real problem here is why are you logged out every 10 minutes?

I agree with patrick7, this seems to be beside the point. Aside from the problem some people are having with getting logged out, people who are not registered members should be able to search the site, and I can’t see any reason to make this more difficult than it has to be, unless there is some motivation for these extra security measures.

#5

I suppose it’s because searching puts a very high load on database. But I wouldn’t solve that via image verification. I would simply forward searches from unregistered users to google (keywords site:elysiun.com).

#6

Yes we store all our search requests and sell them too Google :slight_smile:

But nope,… this is a new feature that came with vBulletin. But as has been mentioned a search requests is indeed quite intensive on the server. So preventing bots and webcrawlers from using the search engine is indeed very usefull too us.

The solution seems to be at the bottom of that thread though. You are logged out after 900 seconds of no-activity. The only way to prevent that is from selecting the ‘remember me’ box when filling in your usrname & password.
If this doesn’t work then there is somekind of problem we need to look into fixing.

#7

I for one am in favor of the search security feature

#8

May I add my voice to those annoyed by the new search feature? When I am looking for something, I usually have to run multiple searches before I find the right term or terms people refer to in the forums. Adding image verification just makes this a lot more difficult.

If indeed the problem is the load on the server, then why not try to address that? The solution suggested by ondrew is good, and if not enough, it could be extended to all users. In other words, make the search button redirect to google at all times. That’s what I’ve been forced to do anyway (for additional reasons like the search not accepting small words - okay, searching for “not blue” is silly but “map texture” is not…)

#9

Yes, either we could spend our precious time doing that, instead of working on the new design.

Or … you could simply login when you want to search.

#10

Your time is, of course, yours to choose how to spend. The reason I’m saying this is that it could address the restrictions in the search terms and flexibility as well as the potential load coming from (unregistered) users.