Thank you Dale. So far after adding the extra registration questions, I haven't had any issues. I do currently moderate all postings and adding a new group may also work after I start building the community.
Thank you all for your help, it is very much appreciated. Randy On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Dale Snell <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 4 Mar 2010 20:03:22 -0800, > [email protected] wrote: > > > > > Anyone have any ideas on how to help alleviate the spamming problem > > of a forum board? > > > > Randy, > > One thing we did on one board I've been on was to make all legitimate, > non-spammer users part of a custom group, Full Members. (All new > members are part of the Registered Users group by default. That's > apparently fixed in phpBB, and can't be changed.) Full Members have > all the normal posting privileges. New members make a posting in a > forum specifically for them (the only one open to Registered Users), > saying something about the site. Those postings are not visible to the > rest of the site. The moderators read the post, and if they approve, > the new member's posting is approved, making it visible to all, and he > or she is made a Full Member. > > Now on a busy board this can take up a lot of the moderator's time. In > fact, the board I'm on has volunteers who weed through the new > postings. They disapprove spammers, reporting them to the mods. > Newcomers who make the grade (it doesn't really take much) are > approved, get Full Member status, and a Welcome! We Want Poetry! > message. (We pester newcomers for poetry. It's not much of a > tradition, but it's what we've got.) If a new member later turns out > to be a spammer in disguise, well, out comes the banhammer. Wham! > > Another thing you can do is ban specific IP addresses, blocks of > addresses, or various domains. A few months ago our admin went so far > as to ban everyone in the .ru domain. The number of spammers dropped > precipitously. > > Anyway, I hope this helps. > > --Dale > > -- > Q: What lies at the bottom of the ocean and twitches? > A: A nervous wreck. > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
