Thread

The spam here is getting outrageous. I propose the following solutions.

1) You must have over 10 posts to have links in your footer. This will curb most footer link spam.
2) Threads with the words “iPod” and “Conversion” in them are sent to a moderation cue and deleted if they are spam (which 99% will be). All of the spam seems to be about iPod conversion software, don’t know why.
3) Any other common spam words are in a bad words list and are sent to the moderation cue.

The moderation thing is what Wordpress allows you to do and it is highly effective for stopping most spam.

Great idea, I am a new member and i see that action has aleady been taken as new members are not allowed to have links due to so much spam.

Just be sure to use the “Report” button when you run across spam posts.  It helps out everyone.

Just be sure to use the “Report” button when you run across spam posts.  It helps out everyone.

I use the report button religiously, I’ve noticed that it can sometimes take a couple of days for them to be removed. Get more site moderators, lots of people on here are willing to do it (myself included).

I’ve noticed there is no ban for signature links and new users either.

A strong anti-spam needs to be there while signing up in the forum, to keep spambots out of reach.
Ban isn’t the permanent solution, you never know if you are blocking the real user.

How about:

1. All new user’s posts are moderated and require approval before…

2. Private messages are also disabled until….
 
 
 

I’m an admin on a classic car forum. We were suffering with loads of spam. We banned links for new users until they were a member for 7 days and had 10 posts. It did cause a bit of a problem because when they posted their ‘Hi I’m new’ thread, everyone was asking to see pics of their car, but they couldn’t post them.

This cut down the bulk of the spam, but it didn’t stop spambots registering until we changed the registration to use reCaptcha. We did have a captcha on the old registration but it didn’t seem to stop the problems.

Now we have reCaptcha, we’ve not had one incidence of a spam bot registering. Obviously you can’t stop people manually registering, but the combination of the two has cut out spamming.

There is one more alternative that can be added in the registration itself - math equation or customized logical field [anything can go here which is recognized by humans only].
Don’t know much about ExpressionEngine portal but have seen it, added it in phpbb and other community forums.
Not a single spambot passed that question ever:)

Check out the Announcments. Steps have been taken to reduce spam and I’m noticing a huge improvement. Thank you Ellislab.