It's better to have more mods, or a "report post" feature, or both.

A report post feature would be helpful, maybe its in the new version of phpbb

We're getting rid of spam at worst a few hours after its posted. Thats pretty good.

I think you would get rid of almost all of it by not allowing new people to post a new thread until they've responded a few times to others posts.

Has there been any spam in the responses of a thread? I haven't seen any here, granted many times they've already been deleted by the time I see a notice for spam. Even if they manually did that, it wouldn't be that many to get rid of. It seems like the BOTs are able to create new threads easily for their spam.

That might help, but it would also hurt the person who just found GRS and wants to ask "Should I liquidate my variable annuity" or "How do I deal with my 2 year contract with DirectTV that I want to get rid of?" or whatever.

Yeah, threads have been spammed after theyve started.

Well, the logic is to become part of the community by responding to posts and maybe helping out a little before you start asking for help yourself right away. A lot of one time posters asking for help never respond back anyhow.

I dont think we're going to restrict the ability for a new member to post. Unless spam gets really out of hand....

Anyway, people who can't read probably won't be helped much by a site that's, you know, written

On my list of things to do is to move the anti-spam code (and to change it) so that it's not so easy to get to. I don't want to institute a rule that people have to participate before posting. That works in some forums, but this is pretty low volume, and I send a LOT of people over here when I don't have time to answer them myself.

Spam isnt that bad of a problem. But if we put the code somewhere better...

JD, can you also auto-send an email to each new signup expressedly stating that we proactively ban spammers?

Spammers expect to get banned, so I'm not sure the emails would have an impact other then creating more work.

I think cleverbeans is correct. Anyone who is actually spamming knows they are spamming and ending an e-mail is just going to give them something else to spam!

you know, i thought I had a good idea, but I clearly didnt think it through ...DOH

How about a lower tier mod position that can only lock threads for review by a full mod? This stop the spam from being bumped and uses the best spam filter available - people. It could potentially be abused but I think it would probably be less likely to happen then spam and is easy enough to fix.

Well, right now I knwo Dylan is very active on the forums as our moderator. Nickel and Jethro are also mods, but they're not as active. JD is the other site admin, but Im always telling him to let me worry about this place and he can concentrate on putting out more great articles.

Hmm.
Let me see whats available to me.