combatting spam

battery_charger

New Member
Registered Member
I have noticed a lot of posts in the Banned/Suspended/Warned Members thread regarding people just signing up and spamming the forums.

However, one of the suggestions mentioned isn't really the way to go about it:

"New member shouldn't be able to create threads and should be limited to 1 post per day. This way spammers (mostly bots) couldn't flood the forum with spam messages"

Trouble is, if you limit all new members to just a single post per day, how are they supposed to be welcomed in and feel part of this forum? Won't this just alienate new members and deter them from posting? Won't it just encourage new members to make multiple accounts in order to make genuine and constructive replies to posts?

I also note that a screenshot was posted on these forums detailing the spam threads. Trouble is, that these spam threads date back to November 2018, which is almost 6 months ago! Quite a lot of other forums have much more spam than this and don't deter new members with heavy handed 1 post a day restrictions...

A better way of doing this would be to place all new threads by new members into a pre moderation queue, so that the threads don't appear live until a moderator has checked them? This would cut down on spam substantially because (a) the spam wouldn't appear on the site at all and (b) the members in question can be dealt with quickly and efficiently. The same could also be done for the first 5-10 posts of new members, to make sure that they are not spammers/idiots/out to disrupt etc.
Various other forums that I have been on, have known to use this technique (some even going as far as manually authorizing each new account created) with high levels of success.

I just thought I'd suggest this a a way of combating the tedious spam that we seem to be getting.

@Deino @siegecrossbow
 

PiSigma

"the engineer"
I have noticed a lot of posts in the Banned/Suspended/Warned Members thread regarding people just signing up and spamming the forums.

However, one of the suggestions mentioned isn't really the way to go about it:

"New member shouldn't be able to create threads and should be limited to 1 post per day. This way spammers (mostly bots) couldn't flood the forum with spam messages"

Trouble is, if you limit all new members to just a single post per day, how are they supposed to be welcomed in and feel part of this forum? Won't this just alienate new members and deter them from posting? Won't it just encourage new members to make multiple accounts in order to make genuine and constructive replies to posts?

I also note that a screenshot was posted on these forums detailing the spam threads. Trouble is, that these spam threads date back to November 2018, which is almost 6 months ago! Quite a lot of other forums have much more spam than this and don't deter new members with heavy handed 1 post a day restrictions...

A better way of doing this would be to place all new threads by new members into a pre moderation queue, so that the threads don't appear live until a moderator has checked them? This would cut down on spam substantially because (a) the spam wouldn't appear on the site at all and (b) the members in question can be dealt with quickly and efficiently. The same could also be done for the first 5-10 posts of new members, to make sure that they are not spammers/idiots/out to disrupt etc.
Various other forums that I have been on, have known to use this technique (some even going as far as manually authorizing each new account created) with high levels of success.

I just thought I'd suggest this a a way of combating the tedious spam that we seem to be getting.

@Deino @siegecrossbow
There isn't enough moderation time for that.
 

Deino

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
IMO a good idea if @WebMaster would agree and if he is able to implement such a practice
 
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