Spam Prevention Idea

[Theodore Kloba]

Does the forum software have an option to require approval of a user's FIRST post after signing up?

 

It seems that most of the spam posts come from "users" who sign up just to make that one post. If every new user's first post is checked for spam (manually), they'll never make it through. Legitimate new users will see a delay before their very first post is viewable, but it's a minor inconvenience. Once the admins realize that a new user is legitimate, they could allow unmoderated posts from them.

[Ken_Coles]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm with Paul on this...It would generate a lot of extra work for us (you have no idea!). The spammers will just wait until their second post to nail us, and then we have twice as many of their posts to clean up. I know, the present system requires you to ignore annoying ads for a few hours. I am out of the country and don't have the access I need to keep up with this, so some have been up much longer recently. Well, I'm on holiday! I'll be back soon.

 

My tuppence; Paul will weigh in if he chooses to.

 

Ken

[Theodore Kloba]

The spammers will just wait until their second post to nail us, and then we have twice as many of their posts to clean up.

I guess I was thinking that the spammers wouldn't bother to try posting on-topic first. Really, this forum seems to suffer from spam a lot less than others.

[Gerry]

Does the forum software have an option to require approval of a user's FIRST post after signing up?

 

It seems that most of the spam posts come from "users" who sign up just to make that one post. If every new user's first post is checked for spam (manually), they'll never make it through. Legitimate new users will see a delay before their very first post is viewable, but it's a minor inconvenience. Once the admins realize that a new user is legitimate, they could allow unmoderated posts from them.

 

As ken noted, Its hard to imagine what can be done that would not involve Paul and Ken with a lot of extra work. Personally, I'm happy to totally ignore these posts until Paul/Ken gets around to deleting them. I think most important is that no-one posts on these threads. Don't put Paul/Ken in the postion of deciding whether to delete a thread or not because of an on-topic reply.

[Cream-T]

Alternatively, the Admins could recruit a number of Moderators, who could delete Spam posts (but otherwise have limited "powers"). That's how we do it on a couple of other boards where I am Admin.