Userscripts.org

I think preventing new users from posting on forums would avoid a lot of these spammers.
For example, users only would be able to post after 7 days of the registering date.

But, for example, 3 out of the 5 most recently replied to topics in the Ideas and script requests forum (excluding the new spam topic) were created by users who appear to have signed up on the day that they post a request. I would suggest that most topics in that section were created by users who signed up just to post in there. That is just the obvious forum, but this may well be the case for other ones two. That limitation does seem somewhat more restricting than helpful.

If we add something like a CAPTCHA on the forums for the first week a user is registered/until they reach a threshold number of posts that aren't removed (as giving a timescale could just mean they leave accounts dormant and then post spam ... I don't know how determined/clever the spammers are), that could work.

Very nice ideia!
Adding a captcha for those that didn't reach a certain number of posts

A captcha would be awesome.

yeah, but is the link-banning thing still gonna be implemented?

What do you guys think about recaptcha for the first forum post? - after you successfully prove you're not a bot you don't have to worry about it again.

I say the first ten posts because a person could just manually type in a captcha then let their bot spam 50 posts or something.

i would say recaptcha for the first 50 posts

Jake Dahn wrote:
What do you guys think about recaptcha for the first forum post?

w35l3y wrote:
i would say recaptcha for the first 50 posts

I'd say this wouldn't be necessary for more than 5-10 posts. If you look at a typical spammer, very few will post more than 5 posts. Typically, it seems they simply create a topic in each of the sub-forums and that is all.

Jake Dahn wrote:
What do you guys think about recaptcha for the first forum post? - after you successfully prove you're not a bot you don't have to worry about it again.

What do you guys think about recaptcha for the first forum post? - after you successfully prove you're not a bot you don't have to worry about it again.

winddomino wrote:
What do you guys think about recaptcha for the first forum post? - after you successfully prove you're not a bot you don't have to worry about it again.

JoeSimmons wrote:
a person could just manually type in a captcha then let their bot spam 50 posts or something.

so...
the link matching thing should work then?

sizzlemctwizzle wrote:
It's better than nothing, but I'd like better anti-bot measures.

Well winddomino's post was a direct copy of the one that Jake wrote, so I don't know what to make of that. All the same, as long as it isn't published (or obvious how many there will be) then the average user won't know that there is a threshold amount of posts, so perhaps the one captcha (or 2, 3, etc.) would be enough to put them off posting multiple times anyway.

A simple captcha for the first 10 posts would be nice, especially if they contain any links.
No smoke without fire. Or no spam without links.

Has spamming been a big problem on this site?

Being a new user to this site, I wouldn't mind a captcha for 10 posts or so, but I definitely would object to not being able to post for 7 days as was mentioned. If that were the case, I probably would not have bothered signing up, since I came here looking for quick help.

Daren wrote:
Has spamming been a big problem on this site?

@Daren:

Yeah, it's pretty annoying. Sometimes, it dies down and all is well, but then it comes back in big waves. :/

@Daren: As Avindra says, it comes and goes but it is a problem. If you take a look at the Spam and malware topic, most posts on there are reporting spammers. Some of the spammers post 1 or 2 posts, some post 6 (one in each sub-forum) and, for example, lucyweng who I reported last had posted 13 different spam topics.

I think we ruled out a time delay on allowing new users to post on the forums pretty quickly though.

Darenwrote:
If that were the case, I probably would not have bothered signing up, since I came here looking for quick help.

znerpwrote:
@Daren: As Avindra says, it comes and goes but it is a problem. If you take a look at the Spam and malware topic, most posts on there are reporting spammers. Some of the spammers post 1 or 2 posts, some post 6 (one in each sub-forum) and, for example, lucyweng who I reported last had posted 13 different spam topics.I think we ruled out a time delay on allowing new users to post on the forums pretty quickly though.

Is there any progress on a reCAPTCHA? The spam on the forums seems to be becoming, if anything recently, more regular.

speaking of that, recaptcha seems to have some new oval thing in the pics, i doubt it makes the thing stronger :p