You guys really need to do something about the spammers

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I will be looking into implementing more spam filters to prevent this from occurring. I'm not sure why it's gotten so bad of all a sudden.

I remember when I joined this site that I couldn't make post that were very close together in time. Perhaps it would help to have something like the minimum time in between posts.

The thing is, although the captcha on CloudFare is supposed filter out the spammers, it doesn't seem to stop them but does stop legitimate regular posters from posting.

SPAM AGAIN!
On "General discussion".

^ got em.

Thumb up!

Thank you Alex



and to all the moderators and posters on here
a good hug

Usually on forums (certainly the two that I'm staff on) your account has to be approved before you can post. I get an email come through from every new registration which shows me their email address and username, and I can either approve or disapprove. Every staff member gets this email/notification on the site. Their email address/username are usually dead giveaways if their spam bots, and usually get declined. If a noody staff approves them then it's not long before their banned.

Another measure that could be taken is approving a new users first post. From a spam bot, this is typically a spam post, in which case the post is disapproved and the account can be banned. They cant post subsequent posts until their first one is approved.

Banning a user never really solves the problem, then can simply sign up again with another email address. IP banning doesn't really help either, as they can just use another location. There will always be more spammers too, and banning each time can be tedious, especially from repeat offenders. The only real steps to take are restrictions on initiating new members. So approving the account before the can post, and approving their first posts are two good options.

If you need a moderator, I've got close to 10 years experience over multiple websites, so I'll be happy to volunteer.

I'm sure that works great on forums with less traffic but unfortunately due to the scale of this website, that wouldn't be feasible (we have dozens and dozens of users signing up each day). Also having to wait to see your post would be a turn-off to a lot of new users.

At this point, it might be better to discourage new users from joining by having to have a mod approve all new posts, and not allowing new users to post new threads for a brief probationary period. The spam has gotten way out of hand, to the point where the GAD thread isn't worth visiting anymore.