Forum Spam

[jitspoe]

So the amount of forum accounts that have been registered recently to spam/increase search rankings is kind of ridiculous.  I even added the registration question that a lot of people struggled with ("What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?") back in, and I had like 5 new spam accounts registered just this morning.  I also have captcha and a couple other questions as well.

I'm pretty sure it is real people registering accounts at this point (a lot of accounts are registered in India and China, where labor is cheap).  I'm not sure what to do to cut down on this.  How do I stop humans from registering when they're registering for spam purposes and not make it a huge hassle for legitimate humans?

[Chalk]

I think this problem could be solved by clearing the ban list.

jk.
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For the spam topics: Only allow topics to be created  by people who have a certain amount of posts in topics(not including their posts in the other stuff section).

There aren't really many ways to fix the account creation problem without possibly messing it up for potential new players. Maybe if there was a stat system — people could only be allowed to register for a forum account after a certain amount of games played(assuming you make them link their game account to the forum account).

Other than that...you just need more forum moderators.

[zimtstern]

@Chalk, posts in "the other stuff" don`t count.

I guess you need some more moderators jitspoe - i see spam in every forum.

Another way is that moderators have to accept new accounts with an e-mail validation, but this prevents some new people from joining this forum..

[jitspoe]

Most spammers don't even create topics, and most new first-time posters will likely be posting a new question or something, so preventing them from starting a new topic isn't that great...

Requiring moderator validation would be almost as much work as deleting spam accounts, and it's difficult to know if an account is actually going to be a spam account or not until they actually post something or set their signature.

[gonass]

Requiring a certain amount of posts in a week/month or else the account is deleted?

[Chalk]

Most spammers don't even create topics, and most new first-time posters will likely be posting a new question or something, so preventing them from starting a new topic isn't that great...

Requiring moderator validation would be almost as much work as deleting spam accounts, and it's difficult to know if an account is actually going to be a spam account or not until they actually post something or set their signature.

i mean.. we don't really notice the accounts being made. the only spam i really see are those random topics that show up once a week advertising weird stuff lol

and yeah, since you already eliminated spam bots with that registration question, there is really no way to get rid of any other human work without hurting legitimate accounts. the best you could do is get more forum moderators to lessen the work load for a single person..

[gonass]

i mean.. we don't really notice the accounts being made. the only spam i really see are those random topics that show up once a week advertising weird stuff lol

and yeah, since you already eliminated spam bots with that registration question, there is really no way to get rid of any other human work without hurting legitimate accounts. the best you could do is get more forum moderators to lessen the work load for a single person..

Still, that's a lot of useless data that will potentially slow the service down.

[RoBiNandL!nk]

I've seen some websites use this, it might help. Make it so that you can't backlink text in you're signature,website or info. And make sure that LINK if there is one is a no-follow link. If people realize this I believe less people will register to this forum over time. I don't quite remember how to do this, but i bet its pretty simple.

EDIT --- or you could make it so you can't set that information for a few months. Sure people will still register.. but I think your popularity for spam accounts will go down over time.