These forums have become unusable due to spam.

[Ken Davis]

Because of the spammers/spambots the forums have rapidly become choked with spam posts.
Either the sign-up procedures need to be drastically changed, or the administrators need to exact more stringent means to clean up these posts.
There's Mods listed as administrators that do not appear..........ever, and it might be in the best interests to solicit other moderators with deletion/banning powers.

This stuff is like graphitti, letting it propagate just brings down the value and enjoyment of the forums. If the software cannot be adjusted to provide for a more intense screening process, then it might be worthwhile to consider other software, if the means exists.

As it is, the service of these forums has plummeted. What's the point in visting the site to look for new posts when all the most recent headers are sales spam for camera or cell phones??


It is understood and recognized that attention to forum maintenance is a hard job, its also understood that moderators also have lives outside of internet time and cannot denote their time 24/7.
Folks, something has to be done here.

[Dan]

Ken and Pat - the level of spam has increased and it has become increasingly tough to contain.

We already have a registration system such that an entity has to register with a valid email address at the same time entering in a set of graphic characters that appear on the screen. At that point, an email is sent to the registered address, which contains a link the user has to hit to make their registration live.

Other than moderating new users, it's as stringent as any reg system. The proble is that people deliberately signup and attack the forums.

The only way around this problem is either to shut off registration or moderate it and drastically cut off the flow of people.

I'm sorry you're annoyed - I am also.

Dan

[phacker]

Thanks for the response Dan. I know it can be a huge problem. Today I notice a lot of them are gone. Thanks for that.