stop the spamming

[grumpy old man]

if we change the name of the selling site to samething different would that stop the spammers i see that all the time wasters try and put things on the selling part call it a used review page and when some one joins and post or joins in with their veiws to topics we could private email them disclosing the true nature of that page.

[sc1]

Often the spam is generated by computer. It's not necessarily someone sitting down to register and then posting. If you remove keywords like "sale" or "selling" then it'll just move to another section of the forum. It's not going to stop unfortunately.

[Skean Dhude]

Thanks for the input. When I turned of Akismet about a dozen existing threads were spammed and one new spam thread created. So it isn't just sale or sell. It is certain keywords they look for which probably include them but there are plenty more.

I'm thinking more along the lines of;
1) Banning anyone with a signature or website. Spammers create those for their links.
2) Making registration require another step with manual approval.

I'm still thinking though.

[JD1]

Manual approval after an introductory post may help as well, although it would also be time consuming for the person having to do the approvals. If you limit members to only posting an intro until they are approved that may keep some of the computer spammers out or at least keep them just in the intro section which might make for easier housekeeping.

One forum I use does the above but also doesnt post the intro until it has been approved which probably helps more but is no doubt even more time consuming and may put off potential new members

It doesn't look like there is an easy answer

[grumpy old man]

thats like the p2s site it is good but i still have not read all the postings yet to really join in with the forum i don't want to post things that have already been done. i know some one who runs a big server site and forum i will ask him if he has any suggestion and let you know it might help

[Skean Dhude]

I've stopped users being able to sign up on the forum. There is a message telling them they need to email me.

The spam stopped instantly. Ahhhh bliss. I've manually added each new user request and it takes 2 mins each. Marking the cursed spammers as spammers took the same time and there was a lot more of them every day. A considerable time saver.