I thought I’d share a idea for prevention of spam on ChiefDelphi that is in place on another forum I am a member of. It seems that most spambots either target the first forum on the list (General Forum) or the forum with the least posts (Pro/E). So I am suggesting, essentially, setting up a “fake” forum, such as this one containing a disclaimer not to post there. If it was both the top forum, and contained only deleted threads, it would be a target for many spam bots. Posting there would both make spam less visible for those of us who don’t want to see it, as there would be no reason for anyone to have the forum on their portal, and easier for the mods to find and deal with. Obviously it would only affect the true “bots” who wouldn’t notice the disclaimer, but it would still help the problem.
EDIT: just noticed that the forum I mentioned requires moderator approval for posts in the forum. Hides the posts even better.
So I am suggesting, essentially, setting up a “fake” forum, such as this one containing a disclaimer not to post there.
While an excellent idea - called a “Honey Pot” in the industry - it wouldn’t work for me, since I only look at “New Posts” and very rarely look at individual fora. That means I’d still see them - but only as an opportunity to report them…
We’re going to run with Akismet for a bit … see if it does any good.
Now that I have the usergroup promotion mechanism in place (you have a probation period between your registration and the ‘trust’ criteria – see below) I can add additional prevention measures on those new users with or without using Akismet. I could add image verification for new users, or more CAPTCHA, or anything …
Criteria to become a trusted member (ie: not a spambot) is one of the following:
Remember that to register you must do a CAPTCHA and the other FIRST related verification. It’s very likely that the spammers are real humans, so an extra CAPTCHA would not do much.