All posts will henceforth be screened

[diamond]

Due to the large number of spammers and smut peddlers that have been visiting this forum, all posts will henceforth be screened. This will slow down response times, but should not prove to be an onerous burdern.

[Speedy]

I hope that ya'll change your mind on this soon. This will really do little to help and it will kill the forum. Being a forum member for years of different forums nothing kills the fun of a forum more than to have all of your post awaiting moderation.

Spammers can be taken care of with alittle work---take a look at CoinTalk.org. One of the, if not the, biggest forum around. We get hit with spammers all the time but with alittle help and Mod's, most of the members never see the post and in most cases the Spam post are taken care of in short time. I've taken off spam post that have been online for less than 2min.

Since this forum is just starting I hope ya'll will re-think your stand on this. It sure won't help it.

[diamond]

It appears that over 50% of our posts consist of spam. With that percentage, moderation would seem to be a sensible strategy. With BJ constantly monitoring this site, and with me checking in at least once a day, the wait time shouldn't be too long on any question. But I will keep your suggestion in mind.

[Speedy]

Ouch..... 50%? That does make the view change some. You might be able to put in some block on words and such that could be used and that might catch some of them.

[adelv_unegv]

Ouch..... 50%? That does make the view change some. You might be able to put in some block on words and such that could be used and that might catch some of them.

I agree on that "block of words" bit if it means what I think he means. Of the 5 or so spam I've reported in this last week, they all appeared to be from the same bot. All the spam started with 3 images at top, all surrounded with the same fancy framework, all followed underneath with a column of links, and all with different usernames of nearly random letters. They scream that they are from the same source by style, but they suggest they are from different sources by username alone. The odd part was finding 3 posts in one forum at the same time (posted across several hours) all materially they same but with different usernames. This suggests bot. A writer of a bot assumes the user account will be deleted and doesn't even try to reuse it hoping to create a new account by reusing the method of entry.

The block of words thing. Many web sites use a graphic to stop bots - a graphic of warped letters/numbers and the human user has to type in what the letters in the box are. People can read pictures of words even when the letters are twisted and warped and even in different fonts and colors. Computer programs have a great deal of difficulty doing the same.

I've seen one web site that stops bots by requiring the legit user to answer a question before the post is permitted. The question? "Do you hate spam? Yes/No" The software does the rest. Bots are not sentient. They have to be programmed. Humans know the answer.

[diamond]

Thanks for the suggestions. We may incorporate some or all of them, should legitimate traffic increase.