SPAM no one likes it.

so I’ve noticed a lot of spam popping up lately on the forums, and although I’m sure you are all fully aware of the problems I thought I might suggest some possible fixes.
All of the Spammers are new accounts which are clearly bots, because the names are all random number/letter strings.
possibly it could be a good idea to temporarily block new account creation while implementing some changes to the sign up process or how new accounts are dealt with.
1) Something like captcha, or a question answering thing, that only humans can complete on signup.
2) limiting posting links to only old accounts/ accounts with over (x) posts
3) limiting which sites can be linked to, by using a white listing system, allow youtube, vimeo, imgur, instagram, etc… this could be expanded on request by a form submisson,
4) having to complete some sort of test before being allowed to post.

really there are many things that can be done, and I’m sure you are probably aware of what can be done and that it takes time and effort to fix these problems, I just thought I would post a few suggestions to help in a collaborative brainstorm to fix the problems. I’m sure other people have Ideas of there own and they can add to the thread if they want.

Hey mate,

We are working on it and it should be fixed very soon.

What happened was we switched servers and some of our plugins became disabled, including our spam filters. The upgrade also caused other problems which means we couldn’t log into our control panel, so we couldn’t even turn the filters back on.

Trust me though, this is being worked on today and we will be cleaning everything up. I know it sucks right now and no one is more frustrated than me. But it will be fixed!

Thanks for your help!

Jez.

All good mate. seems like it will just take a little while before the site will be restored to its former glory. hope it’s all fixed soon.

Thanks mate, I appreciate it.

Not only are we aiming to restore everything, but we have a lot of fixes, upgrades and new features in the pipeline. The new team literally took over today and it should be very productive from here onwards. It was just a nightmare fixing the server AND getting everything handed over to the new team… all very bad timing really.

Yeah hell pumped to see everything back to normal! Any idea of a timeline for that Jez?

A lot has been fixed over the weekend, more coming the next day or so. There’s an update thread in Boardworld Social.

Pretty sure the Japanese embraced it after the US Military based itself in the South?????