Anti spambot suggestion

[HandofShadows]

This is something I have seen done on a few other sites and it seems to cut down on the spam quite a bit.

When I person signs up for the forum they have a "base" level account. (A base level account cannot make new threads) At this base level account (for people with a zero post count) they can see only a single subsection or thread on the forum. This is the "Welcoming Thread". In order to become a "full member" with full posting privilages they have to make some sort of post to the Welcoming thread (respond to a thread). (A "Hi there!" is all that is needed).

Most Spam bots don't have the capability of respond to already existing threads, just creating news ones. Now this does make signing up for the forums a little more work (but not much) and it will require some work on the back end to pull off. But it should stop most spam bots. The human spam bots will still get through but there are a lot fewer of those than the automated spam bots.

Hope this suggestion is usefull. :smallsmile:

[Traab]

It would be nice if something worked, it seems to be getting worse. We used to get 1-2 posts per board a day, now there are upwards of 7 in a row on the media forum.

[The Rose Dragon]

Suggested, considered and discarded before. I am not privy to why, but worth noting is that spam can crop up in extant threads, including ones not directly viewable in default settings (such as year-old threads). All the bot needs is to find a few keywords in the thread to post there.

[ChristianSt]

I really would not like that (so I'm glad it isn't something that is going to happen).

Jumping through hoops to get normal forum access is just a bad idea in my opinion.
I once registered on a forum, just to ask a question, after typing my post it said it first needs to go through a moderator - after a few days nothing happened (I PM'ed a mod, who could only say that I should try it again). After writing that post new, after a few more days it showed up. I do not longer visit that forum.

Having the to just ignore some spam-threads isn't that hard.

(Here a link to the most recent Thread about it: Measure against spam threads; no starting of threads for new users? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=285323)

[Rawhide]

Hi,

Thank you for the suggestion. We are currently not intending to implement any such anti spam measure.