Another Way to Stop Spam

[TheJason]

Ask users to answer a question backward. It stops spambots - seems to. Anyway, it's better than manual approval of all posts.

For instance, "What is "htam" spelled backward?

 

[mmm4444bot]

Hello TheJason. From what I've been told, new members must reply to a challenge question, when registering. That does not prevent all automated registrations; it only slows their progress, as bots can prompt spammers to answer the question and then finish registering.

Were a spammer to register (by spelling 'htam' backwards) and then post spam, would you prefer to see their spam appear in the forum and be removed later versus deleting the spam (and its author) through manual moderation before it can appear in the forum?

My preference is to keep as much spam from appearing on the boards as possible. That requires manual moderation.

 

[TheJason]

Hello TheJason. From what I've been told, new members must reply to a challenge question, when registering. That does not prevent all automated registrations; it only slows their progress, as bots can prompt spammers to answer the question and then finish registering.

Were a spammer to register (by spelling 'htam' backwards) and then post spam, would you prefer to see their spam appear in the forum and be removed later versus deleting the spam (and its author) through manual moderation before it can appear in the forum?

My preference is to keep as much spam from appearing on the boards as possible. That requires manual moderation.

Spambots are pretty easy to keep out of XenForo, but some spammers are not bots.

 

[mmm4444bot]

... some spammers are not bots.

That was my point. We still need to moderate posts.

By the way, we don't manually approve all posts. The system moderates posts from new members only, and it stops once a new member has enough approved posts.

?