well i was thinking, something should be done about the spammer problem. i know the web sites budget isn't exactly too high, but we have C_A with computer skills though... so i was thinking if we could do something where someone is spammed by a moderator, the person will be banned from this site forever by doing something with the IP code (it happened to me once because i was to young to use meebo...) so either way it would be much better.
 
we could also use Captcha, it's that annoying thing on youtube that makes you type in what you see in those words that only a real person can see, and not a spam bot

we block ip addresses, we block email addresses (well I do)  
 
The problem is that these are not spambots they are real people signing up for forum accounts, so none of the auto block things work.  
 
I do go through new members and delete any obvious ones - but they're not all obvious till they post spam.  
 
Any ideas are welcome

well I suspect they'd just post spam first in the new members forum and then go and post it elsewhere.  
 
keep thinking

not sure that's practical - or even possible.  
 
The problem is that currently, until they post, it's very hard to tell a spammer from a 'normal' member.  
 
I do check all the new members and delete a fair number before they post - but I have to give some very odd email addresses the benefit of the doubt. It's a thin line between deleting spammers and deleting genuine members.  
 
Given the timezone distribution of the slinging.org membership (and for our younger american members that means a lot of us Do Not Live in the states there is always going to be a point when a spammer appears and no mods are logged on.  
Equally, given that aussie is 11 hours ahead of me and I'm 8 hours ahead of chris, we do have mods around at times that an all american website would not.  
 
Why we get so many spammers I couldn't say. It might well be the international nature of the forum, or simply the fact that we're it as far as slinging goes on the web.  
 
 
 

Down with spammers!

Quote from Captain Paul on Sep 9^th, 2009, 8:25am:

 
first off, thanks for the sling you sent me nearly a year ago, great sling it is, great sling...
 
as for a spam bot, their basically computer programs/viruses that are designed to post spam on stuff. the only thing is that a spam bot can become a god member in a few minutes

This guy is prolific.  Also, it might just be me, but on the main forum page, where it has info on the latest post to the side of each category, it usually looks like this:
 
Yesterday at 8:46pm                 (date)
In: Re: introduction                   (thread)
By: Aussie                                (member)
 
But when it posts, it look like this:
 
Today at 2:51pm                       (date)
In: Did anyone hear of HYIP?      (???? part of it's post????  this was not the name of the thread)
By: Escasylap                            (member)
 
I have never noticed this before, but thats not to say that it hasn't happened.  Why is it like this?
Also, is this guy a bot of a person?  (For curiosity's sake, sorry if I'm meddling)  How can we get rid of it?
Personally, I think we should nuke the site from orbit...  

C_A,
Great work against the latest miserable b***d spamming the forum