Spam is in season it seams.

Spam is also a never-ending battle between admins/mods and spam botters. I would like to discuss options we could implement here.

There are normally 2 basic ways to fight spam - signup/posting verification (e.g. captcha-like functions) and human verification.

The 2nd is the best option - but is also time consuming. Here are some ideas:

1) Introduce a new mod level - one that can temporary hide posts, e.g. for 24 hours etc.

Pros: Many members could be enabled for this kind of access - allowing constant spam removal

Cons: Development time required.

2) Improve the captcha on sign-up/posting

Pros: less spam without human interaction.

Cons: Some of the recent Captcha methods can be as difficult for humans to work out as bots.

3) Automated post verification, have a function that checks (a configurable list) when a post is submitted to identify if a post is suspected spam - and auto hide it for admin verification.

Pros: Automated - would be hard for the bots to detect because to them it looks like everything has worked - i.e. sign-up worked, post has been submitted.

Cons: Development effort involved.

4) Improve the 'New Account - first post needs to be approved' method - From memory there was something like this in place - but it has either been turned off - or the bots are posting a safe first post then updating later?

Pros: N/A

Cons: N/A

I don't know enough about the current implementation to know how it might be improved yet.

I am able and willing to put in a little time to any development effort if required. Perhaps the site (or certain sections) of the site could be made open source - allowing contributors to explore spam fighting methods that Bart could review and use if useful?

-----

UPDATE:

eugeneloza has mentioned that they have some scripts they are willing to share to help in this fight (but cannot currently respond to this post - only edits and new posts working it looks like).