Spam

[MadClikr]

Wow, so many spammers, tonight! I've locked the site down so that new users are no longer able to post or reply to threads. Hopefully, the permissions are all set right! If any of you are finding that you suddenly cannot reply or post new messages, please send me a private message!

[Trudy in Illinois]

I saw them too and got rid of some of the posts. Thank you for making me an assistant moderator, or Queen of the Deletes. It was a pleasure.

[MadClikr]

Trudy, thanks for your help! We make a good team, you and I.

[Trudy in Illinois]

You're welcome. I, also, sent them private messages which told them, "SPAM is not permitted on this site. If you post SPAM, again, you will be permanently banned. You are being watched." I hope they understood the seriousness of their doings.

[MadClikr]

I permanently ban the first time they do it. Sometimes, people register for the sole purpose of posting spam or advertising Web sites. It really ticks me off, because I hate having to lock the site down so much - it keeps some of the good people out there from sharing things as easily as they might otherwise be able to if we didn't have all the registration requirements and moderated posts. There isn't much we can do about it though, besides delete, ban, and move along.

[Trudy in Illinois]

Good idea. Maybe there could be a banner about NO SPAM or WHAM YOU'RE GONE. Blaze orange or shocking pink could get attention. What seems to be the worst night for spammers?

[MadClikr]

Most of them are automatic computer programs which search the Web for bulletin boards to post on. They register names automatically (those CAPTCHA images help, but they can only do so much before they're impossible for the computer programs and people to read), and post automatically. What a pain!

[MadClikr]

Even though the spam users can no longer post, we're still getting way too many of the automatic registrations, so I've temporarily disabled new user registration. If any legit people want to register, let me know!

[Trudy in Illinois]

good idea to do that. Perhaps you could put a message to contact you as the administrator. To prevent the automatic registrants from getting one, you could ask a question a human would answer. Does that sound logical?

[MadClikr]

Unfortunately, a lot of the programs can answer the "human" questions now because the questions need to be simple enough that almost all people can answer them. They just have a database of questions and answers which they use.