Death to All Spammers

[Darth Wedgius]

I think the only long-term fix is to make a more resistant CAPTCHA layer for new users, but I also think that wouldn't be easy or pain-free to implement; I could go into a lot of geek about that (different browsers, visually-impaired people, session state, etc.), having done something like that on a different platform, but it's not easy to make one that's bulletproof. And we're talking about people doing this in their free time.

That's why folks are talking about an interim hiatus for new users, until/unless that can be put into place. But it's a pretty draconian step. If spammers were hitting the forums like the cyborg lovechild of SkyNet and Jackson Pollock... but that's not happening yet.

TL;DR Everyone will have to be patient for a while.

[Admiral X]

There are some forums that require all new posters to post in a specific forum. Maybe we could do something like that? So that way the first post or the first few posts have to go there and can perhaps be more easily moderated that way before allowing new members free access to the rest of the board.

[clearspira]

Y'know... I've always wondered what the point of it all is. Do you know a single person that has ever gone ''gee, this bot on the internet is advertising a clearly dodgy product. Lets click on it!''

[Darth Wedgius]

Y'know... I've always wondered what the point of it all is. Do you know a single person that has ever gone ''gee, this bot on the internet is advertising a clearly dodgy product. Lets click on it!''

There's probably a very low success rate but there's extremely low cost to just adding another server to target with spam, especially if a computer found the server. As far as why anyone would click... I read that around 2% of Americans think the Earth is flat.

[Deledrius]

Do you know a single person that has ever gone ''gee, this bot on the internet is advertising a clearly dodgy product. Lets click on it!''

Sadly, yes.

[Admiral X]

I'm sure some of it is that they're actually hoping for a mostly dead forum so they basically have a place to advertise whatever it is, which will in turn show up in Google searches and the like.

[Independent George]

Plenty of people also click accidentally while trying to go somewhere else. Sometimes that's enough to get malware installed.

[Robovski]

They are expanding into other sections now. I would not be surprised to see one in this thread soon.

[TGLS]

There was a while ago.

[PerrySimm]

The issue has slowed somewhat, but not quite out of the woods yet.