Forum Spam - Post Count Rules?

[Avatarati]

I discovered this forum a few weeks ago, but since then I've been drawn to it. The users have been very friendly and helpful so far and I enjoy the discussions.

I've noticed a lot of spam posts though when I click on "View unanswered posts." They seem legitimate but the OP's are just promoting links probably as part of their blackhat SEO processes for their websites...

Is there not a forum post count rule for posting links in posts? I hate to see such a nice website being cluttered with stuff like that.

[iDad]

It is very tricky to spot if the spanner is wise in his delivery a it does keep the moderators pretty bust at times Problem how do set rules on someone that's just going to break them anyway?

[webmaster]

The problem is that these spammers are humans. We have been taking care of the bots. But it's impossible to stop a human for registering and posting.

We are currently building some functions to make it harder for these people. One of them is the function you mentioned with only members with X+ posts can post links.

Another is fetching common spammer words, and if too many of these words are in the same post, the mods will get a notification about this thread.

The best method so far has been a list of IPs that spammers use, so people from these IPs can't register. We try to keep updated with these lists, but spammers change their IPs all the time.

But yeah, we're constantly working on this issue! Don't give up hope, webmasters will win the battle against spammers in the long run!

[Avatarati]

Ok, thanks for the quick replies. Hope you can do something about them in the future.

[sridhar06]

That and stopping people from posting on a thread they just posted on. Erm...for example...let's say I post on a thread, then 2 minutes later I try posting again. I shouldn't be allowed to post until someone else posts, that way my post is a response to another person's.

Nothing can really stop spamming, but there's a lot of things that can help to do so.