Site feedback?

[TheIrishRover]

It almost came to that around ten months ago. Also, cheers for helping the site, Kufen.

[$lugz]

love the photo section,some great smudges...very cooooooooooooool

[Eric V]

Great site. I'm new, but will be here for a while, regardless of THE GREAT 9:30 CLUB TICKET COCK-UP. Today, I missed out on tickets and I was offered tickets by another forum member and by a guy in the band within an hour of my discovery of the situation. You will not find that anywhere else in the modern music scene. And now I'm feeling weepy and must go to the pre-sale site to slug it out with my compatriots. Love and kisses... (since I missed the group hug)

[welsh rover]

Just thought I'd comment on how good the forum is - I'm pretty new to it (though not the band or the site as a whole I hasten to add!)

All are very friendly and extremely knowledgable and where else could you post a question and get a band member to answer?!

Philip is of course often up for some banter and I saw the other day that someone had posted a question about playing Fairytale on the piano and James Fearnley answered - how cool is that?

Anyway, it's good to experience the mutual appreciation of a great band - here's to the future, more tours and who knows what else - fingers crossed.

Thank you very much to those who do all the work keeping the site going and of course to the Pogues themselves.

One question though - how about a shop for Pogues merchandise??

[DzM]

One question though - how about a shop for Pogues merchandise??

The future is nebulous.

Thanks for the kind words.

[Paddy Rolling Clone]

I've been getting a message to say I've been banned from the forum on the PC at home, did I miss something?

[MissWalshy]

spamming.

Its not big and its not clever.

(joking)

[DzM]

I've been getting a message to say I've been banned from the forum on the PC at home, did I miss something?

Sometimes innocent people get caught in the spam bans that happen.

Please PM me with your home IP address (or email it to me at dzm@dzm.com).

[Paddy Rolling Clone]

spamming.

Its not big and its not clever.

(joking)

I've been getting a message to say I've been banned from the forum on the PC at home, did I miss something?

Sometimes innocent people get caught in the spam bans that happen.

Please PM me with your home IP address (or email it to me at dzm@dzm.com).

Seems to be working ok now, thanks DzM.

[neilinseattle]

Sometimes innocent people get caught in the spam bans that happen.

King George II could learn a thing or two from you DzM!

[DzM]

Sometimes innocent people get caught in the spam bans that happen.

King George II could learn a thing or two from you DzM!

I'm not entirely sure what's meant by this, but I suspect it has something to do with innocents sometimes being caught up in the bans of spam bots and an implication that this is a Wrong Thing.

Unfortunately it's one of the only ways to deal with spam bots (see this topic for some discussion of other methods we'e been using), and it's a calculated risk. Due to the way teh intarwebs work banning a bot machine can sometimes inadvertantly blacklist several perfectly valid users. I go to great lengths to avoid this, but sometimes it happens.

"But why?" you're asking.

Many ISPs have their users invisibly routed through what are called proxy servers that allows them (the ISPs) to cache web page content within their own network, and to minimize the number of "public" IP addresses (these are unique addresses that identify your computers to the world) they expose. Unfortuantely this means that the IP address we see on the web server side is that of the proxy server, not that of the end user. So if a spam bot (or a wanker) has to be blocked by IP address there is a chance that is blocked could in fact be a proxy server and that other legitimate users might be coming through it.

Another possible proble is what's called "dynamic IP addresses" or DHCP. This is a method ISPs use to assign IP addresses to a group of users for short periods of time (usually a few days at a time for broadband connections). So it's possible that a spam-bot machine will have an IP address that gets banned, and then a week later that address will get reassigned to some other legitimate user and they would find themseles banned.

But I'm rambling - before an IP gets blocked I check to see if any other user has used that IP address, and if so the PMs and I resign ourselves to manually deleting the spam messages. The ban message also provides my email address and a brief explanation of the three reasons you may be banned, and instructs the banned user to contact me if a mistake happened.

Or something.

Think I'll go back to drinking heavily instead of writing long-winded messages.

[body-of-an-american]

why dont u just go on msn

[DzM]

why dont u just go on msn

What? This is a non-sequiter and doesn't mean anything to me. Why don't I (or somebody else?) go to MSN for what?

[body-of-an-american]

it was talkin bout chat how you should at a chat and i was saying if people want to chat they may aswell just go on msn/yahoo or what ever other thing they have.

[DzM]

it was talkin bout chat how you should at a chat and i was saying if people want to chat they may aswell just go on msn/yahoo or what ever other thing they have.

Aha! That makes much more sense now. Thanks!