Suggestion for dealing with spammer

[Hickeydog]

As the 405th has grown, we have become a bigger target for spammers. These are usually spam bots meaning that no actual person doing the posting. Replying to these posts explaining the rules here are pointless, as the spam bot never comes back to read his threads.

So, best way to deal with these posts are to simply report the post, and then post "reported". This achieves two goals: It alerts the staff that the post needed to be taken care of, and it lets other members know that the post has been reported. This will prevent the staff from being flooded with messages about the one post.

I'm active on several other forums, and this method seems to work the best for reporting the sneaky little spam bots.

 

[Cobbatron]

Well put! I hate spam bots...

 

[OptimusWang]

The easiest way to deal with spam bots is make a honeypot. Basically, you make a field that a user can't see, then add a rule that if the field has content entered, don't allow the post. At work we use this method instead of using Captcha for web forms (Captcha is obnoxious and kills conversion rates) and it works out great.

 

[Lord Talon]

Sounds like a winner to me...I hate spambots!

 

[Ravenwolf]

I think both Hickeydog and OptimusWang are on the right track. Wang's suggestion should help with the spambots, and HD's would help with all other cases (the non spambot, but still illegal posts)

 

[Sean Bradley]

Well said and much appreciated Hickeydog. Theres inly so much that we can do once they get in other that wait for reports and ban them. I believe Captcha is an option here, but as stated it will tend to discourage our members as much as it discourages the spammers.

Just report them as you see them and the mods can tak it from there.

 

[Hickeydog]

Here's a suggestion for the registration process. Jason over at eocf.com came up with this quite ingenious way of stopping the spammers from registering in the first place. He added a field in the registration page that reads:

What is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?

A phrase popularized from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

This is a human verification test... Your answer must be valid to pass the registration process. If you don't know the answer, this Google search will provide you a quick result.

Your answer must be in the form of digits only!

And it seems to be VERY effective at stopping the little spammers in their tracks. In the past 2 months, we've probably had all of 3 spammers get in.