Too many spammers

Ask Atlas
1

Is there no chance of changing the board software so as to make everyone's first post(s) go only to a moderator, and require them to be marked "OK" before they are clear to post to the rest of the Forum?

The Yahoo groups have such a thing - the (much neglected) Lex Hermeticum group has that rule.

It just seems that nearly every new user who makes 1-3 posts is joining solely to have an account to post spam. The number of genuine newcomers is quite small...

[Captcha has been and had its day - spammers pay a pittance to 3rd-world humans to read and answer captcha questions.]

2

Good point ... I'll ask our webmaster. I just banned something like 30 IPs over the weekend, following up on everybody's reports on spammers. :frowning:

3

Gaah they invented a spambot with a sense of irony, abandon Message Board! flees in panic

4

today, the scum using the name "shoes888" posted 55 messages, all spam...

5

Yup, this is very frustrating.

6

I've had one recent volunteer to be a Spaminator. Any others out there?

7

I just set the limit on the number of links in sigs to 3. If it keeps being a problem, I may disable links in sigs altogether, though I hate to do that since quite a few legitimate users have legitimate links in their sigs.

8

I'd like to help. I am on this board like almost every day Monday through Friday.

9

We're up to 6 Spaminators now, which I think is plenty ... I'll post again if we need more later on. Our thanks to our new volunteers! :slight_smile:

10

After much research, I think we've figured out how to require moderation of the first post of new users. Please let me know if you encounter any trouble with it.