Time for stricter forum access?

[aaOzymandias]

I see a lot of spam these last days, I guess it is time to make forum access a bit stricter?

[UltraMantis]

At the time aaOzymandias posted this, no less than 68 spam topics littered the forum. Including 11 advertising porn. I think we are all aware and annoyed with this spam problem but rest assured the moderating team is doing their very best to keep this place clean and enjoyable.

I'm happy to hear everyone's opinion but keep in mind that tighter forum access will not entirely keep spam away and it may greatly inconvenience regular users and deter new ones. That would replace one kind of annoyance with another.

As hollidays approach, i expect unwanted posts to appear more frequently. The safest thing to do is to ignore suspicious topics completely and alert a moderator by Private Message. I get email alerts of PMs so if i'm near a PC and have some spare time, i'll login and remove the spam.

[boa13]

I was about to repeat pretty much what UltraMantis said.

I'll add that there has been an impressive surge in spam in the past few days, this is why you have seen more of them despite a reinforcement of the mod team. Rest assured the team does its best. Looking back at the past few days, we have managed to clean the forum fully at least once every six hours, during most of the day this is more frequent: once every hour, or couple of hours.

Spam comes and goes in tides, here's hoping we are at high tide currently.

[ZiMMy]

How about adding captcha (recaptcha for ex) on registration?

[VanguardOfValor]

I'd love a way to flag posts as spam.

At least that way I'd feel like I was helping to fix the problem, if indirectly.

[UltraMantis]

How about adding captcha (recaptcha for ex) on registration?

That doesnt work on human beings i'm affraid, so it wouldn't help solve the problem.

I'd love a way to flag posts as spam.

At least that way I'd feel like I was helping to fix the problem, if indirectly.

Your enthusiasm is appretiated. It has been mentioned before but i dont know if it will be implemented. It would be nice to have a feature that hides unwanted posts once they are flagged or voted down. It would be easier to ignore the rubbish. Although it may be just extra work for regular users, so im not so sure it's a good idea.

[Hoa_Binh]

I would love to see something I've seen in another forum, the first five of your posts have to be checked by a moderator before they are added. From what I noticed it was automatic and only once you had posted five times that the moderators let through could you post freely.

The advantage to that is the cost in time for spammers, they would need to write five posts that get past the moderator team before they can start spamming.

[aaOzymandias]

Deterring new users is of course an issue, but I think most users are accustomed to some kind of registration that involves extra measures. Imo, it is more a deterrent to see rampant spam posts. Not that this forum is all bad, mind you, and I think the moderators are handling the spam swift, but it is hard to compete with spam bots in the long run if there is too many of it.

[Kieve]

Thanks to some new measures Matt implemented, forum spam has been drastically reduced. A few still slip through here and there, but nothing like the twenty-post "Live Streaming!" spammers we've been plagued with.