!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This site is getting hacked !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Easy, gents. Notice that you never saw a post by this pornographer. As soon as he posted, I would have received a report alerting me to a new poster. If the post is inappropriate, it gets deleted and the poster gets banned. I've banned 49 posters so far. CAPTCHA does not prevent someone from registering individually. CAPTCHA is designed to keep the spambots out, not to prevent folks from registering. All of the banned folks tried to post some marketing message or some fake link. We have not been hacked. But, I am working hard to keep the spammers out.

There are hundreds of them though. JK, do you really believe there are 9700 members who read this website. There were 4000 old accounts in December 2020. 5000+ accounts since. Perhaps new members should be only added with moderator's approval. Look at this, these are all spam accounts, it is already out of control, so far 39 accounts were created today:

@chav, No one is saying there are 10,000. I can see the fake accounts. They are virtually all spambot created. The point is, none of them are able to post or access anything else on the site because they are unable to get by CAPTCHA. Hence, they all have 0 posts. The ones who register individually, using the same process you and I do, are deleted and banned. 

@jkuvakas They already passed CAPTCHA to create the account, I understand they are not posting, and nobody is looking at their profile either, and it doesn't supposedly affect us directly. But these are all red flags for me, why are these account even there.... sorry, it doesn't build confidence in the site.

John, Chav makes some good points. The more apparent accounts/members, even thousands of fake ones, makes the site then more attractive to spammers/bad-intentioned posters ...... which then increases the creation of more fake accounts, etc, etc. Surely, fake accounts can be removed.

Another problem I have is my old account (which could not be re-activated for some reason) is _still_ there. Again, I would like it to be removed because whether it is inactive or not, just it sitting there with my name and being an additional ghost account is not a comfortable feeling. If it will not be removed for any reason, then I would have some real questions about procedures and security.

@mikedetorrice, @chav. The accounts can be removed but not without taking the time to remove them page by page and making sure not to delete any valid accounts. I'm sorry you guys are upset about this but there are only so many hours in the day. They do not present a security risk and all of them are inactive. That's about all I can do. The danger in those types of accounts is not in them raiding the site or hacking it, it is in their posting some attractive-looking link for an unwary person to click on and inadvertently arrive at a dangerous site. They're prevented from doing that by CAPCHA.

Mike, your old account is deleted.

Thanks, John. You are being asked to do far more than you should be as just one person. I would hope forum ownership themselves would provide additional help to you in security and administrative areas or take over much of that behind-the-scenes busy work for you.

@jackwells, I can delete your account, if you like. 

John, thank you for your good work as well as your fine leadership.  A day without this forum is kind of dull, kind of like trying to put out a fire with this machine:

                              David H   (New wheels are on order.)

(SEVERAL DAYS LATER}

  The new wheels came.  And here are the results:

This firetruck is from my "oldies" collection, and I have fun there, too!

Thanks, David. I'm happy to help out but this site is made great by folks like you who help make us a community. 

Not easy to run a site like this.  Thanks, John, for all of your hard work.  This site has remained popular in spite of the 1/24 die cast demise.

Thank you for all of your hard work managing this site for us to enjoy daily John; much appreciated.

@kocour @jack-dodds, In the long run, the closing of the mints may turn out to be a better thing than it would first appear (I know some would consider this statement sacrilege). I think we're finding out that we have more in common than we thought, that this community is populated with a lot of really good people. Furthermore, for the diehard collectors that want to keep on collecting, a wide variety of new vistas and subjects have opened up. For those who think 1/24 is the only scale for them, they still have a community where they can share their interests.

For me, I get to dip into all the forums each day and enjoy the incredible diversity of the hobby. I feel privileged and blessed to be part of it all. On top of that, the Lounge has become the most heavily trafficked board on the site. You two and a host of others add a lot to what we're all enjoying. 

Thanks.