Have you considered preventing new accounts from making threads?

[Thomar_of_Uointer]

It looks like most of the spambots on the site create an account and post in the same day. A 48-hour new user ban on making new threads, or a requirement that you post to a newbie/introduction/rules thread first, might curb a lot of the spambot activity.

[Keltest]

Not sure how that would stop them. AFAIK there is nothing that would stop the botters from just programming in a delay between "make account" and "Spam threads" equal to the length of the lockout.

[Flickerdart]

Not sure how that would stop them. AFAIK there is nothing that would stop the botters from just programming in a delay between "make account" and "Spam threads" equal to the length of the lockout.
I'm guessing that these are not custom GitP bots (BitPs?) but generic crawler bots. The Playground is far too small to justify a targeted attack.

There might be a "moderator review" module somewhere that would make the first thread created by a user have to go through moderation approval - if the thread is legit, the lock is lifted, since they're unlikely to turn into a spambot.

[Rawhide]

Yes, we have. No, we're not going to. I could go into all the reasons why, but it's late, so I'm not. Sorry.


I'm guessing that these are not custom GitP bots (BitPs?) but generic crawler bots. The Playground is far too small to justify a targeted attack.

Nope. These are definitely targeted. We have added custom fields that exist no where else, we have used a system where you needed to fill in the name of a character from the Order of the Stick, and yet they still come. These are definitely not generic bots, and many might not actually be bots but people paid to spam.