Method of decreasing spam

I have an idea that is simple and may just work.

Make avatars mandatory. That is not a usual requirement so a bot would not pass it. Humans can still do so.

We seem to be going round in circles slightly - the argument earlier on in this thread was that a lot of the time it works with humans doing the captcha bit and bots taking over from there. Besides, I'm a miserable old sod who doesn't like avatars :p
 
Bottom line is it's a never ending battle to stay ahead of the spammers. Nothing's foolproof or bulletproof. We create something to trip them up and a few days later they have figured out how to get around it or how it works so they can program the bots.
We just have to keep our eyes open and report spam to the mods when we see it. Like I said " The price of peace is eternal vigilance "
 
We seem to be going round in circles slightly - the argument earlier on in this thread was that a lot of the time it works with humans doing the captcha bit and bots taking over from there. Besides, I'm a miserable old sod who doesn't like avatars :p
You avatarless creep!
 
I understand all of the above arguments for just "staying ahead of it", but like I mentioned, I take issue to porn on these forums. There's a difference between posting a link to porn and posting ACTUAL porn pictures on here. I still think there should be some sort of 5 post minimum to post links/images because of this.
 
You avatarless creep!
Pictures are for n00bs, real geeks use ascii ;)

I understand all of the above arguments for just "staying ahead of it", but like I mentioned, I take issue to porn on these forums. There's a difference between posting a link to porn and posting ACTUAL porn pictures on here. I still think there should be some sort of 5 post minimum to post links/images because of this.
I'd agree with this on images, even if it was just a 2-3 post minimum - there's very few cases (if any) I've seen of genuine users trying to post images in their first few posts so I can't see it particularly getting in the way.
 
OT:
Pictures are for n00bs, real geeks use ascii ;)
I use ASCII in my work email signature. I'm not posting all the information in it but just the relevant part. I did a screenshot so the formatting isn't messed up.

w9iazl.png
 
I have an idea that is simple and may just work.

Make avatars mandatory. That is not a usual requirement so a bot would not pass it. Humans can still do so.
Humans are actually registering the names, they have to because of the captcha that we have, then they cut the bot loose after it's all registered.

I'm not sure that there is really anything we can do to stop them from registering, we can however do things like 5 posts before you can post links or pics. But they can still post the url, it just won't be a clickable link.

My .02 on this is that we just need to keep dealing with it as best we can. There have been times where I checked my email when I got home and had a bunch of post reports and spent 20-30 minutes cleaning up spam before I even got a chance to browse the forum. It's just part of the job. When you have a forum that is as active and has as many members as this one does you're going to have spam, that's just the way it is.
 
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