[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Chris Lawrence

what's interesting is that all the SPAMMERS are back - dozens of filthy threads that you'll hopefully never see - I even just deleted a post from this very thread - weird cuz the spambot action had definitely chilled out before the forum broke...

yeah, you gotta change the incentive structure and then nuke the accounts.

the economic calculation of spammers can be broken down into costs and benefits.

first, increase the cost of registration by adding captchas against bots, and registration questionnaires to filter out human bulshitters. if they wanna post garbage, make them sweat for it. have them write an essay or something.

then mods can approve honest registrations manually, rather than swat the swarm of flies endlessly after the maggots have hatched lol.

then remove some of the rewards. eg eliminate profile & weblinks that survive post banning. this can be done in forum settings. notice how spammer profiles all are blooming with contact info? eg this fresh dillhole: http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/member.php?u=143947 registered just today. has web porno address, email, skype links, various messengers you can click on. even if banned from posting, those links remain. rewards for them! pain for the rest of us.

also there are ways to reduce crawlers. see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard.

you could also set it up so that new registrations can't post right away, so, no benefit possible (or increased cost of reward, like having to befriend us for a month before putting ads for some trash college paper mill)

all of this can be done in software to reduce the human labor requirements, but it requires an updated version of the software plus some basic tech support... i mean if you're using a vendor like vbulletin they should be able to provide guidance on how to set up things correctly for minimal effort, how to clean up dead profiles, how to block spammy addresses, etc.

there are only a handful of people posting every day, there is no reason for dozens of daily registrations and thousands of "invisible users" who are nothing but bots.

once you've curbed spammer registrations, and hurt their profits, nuke existing spammer profiles from the database.

do we really have 143,947 users? must be some party lolololol. don't serve them drinks anymore-- nukem instead.

eta, 2/24: "Most online action ever was 5,338 users, 06.14.2021 at 11:24 PM."
that was probably 5336 bots and 2 actual persons

and speaking of bots, this one just logged on: http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/member.php?u=137216 (banned, but still functional with a fully linked user profile...)