Anti-spam question

You guys probably should add some sort of anti spam question to forum registration. This may help cut down the amount of bot signups and spamming there is.

Will look into it Jako, thanks for the suggestion.

Ya you guys should definitely try to get something like that in the system. I know vbulletin.org has some mods for these.

A lot of the larger forums have these now and they really seem to work.

Just a simple question like "what is 5+3" will greatly have an affect.

Right now I've suggested that we get the Akismet mod to help weed out the spam. I personally can't get it (don't have a vb account / license). The mod is renown for it's success on Wordpress, so why not try it with vBulleting since they have a vb version out.

Originally Posted by Jeff Andersen Right now I've suggested that we get the Akismet mod to help weed out the spam. I personally can't get it (don't have a vb account / license). The mod is renown for it's success on Wordpress, so why not try it with vBulleting since they have a vb version out.

I never had much luck with the Akismet mod for my wordpress blog, but I haven't looked into it in probably a year

Well it's worth a try.
Will keep looking through and see if there are any other highly recommended anti spam mods to see if we can't eliminate it all together.

Originally Posted by Jeff Andersen Well it's worth a try. Will keep looking through and see if there are any other highly recommended anti spam mods to see if we can't eliminate it all together.

Is email verification turned on? Surely that can help too.

Originally Posted by Jako Is email verification turned on? Surely that can help too.

Yes, That's the first thing I verified.
I've been in contact with Zee, will look into getting captcha added.

Regards,
Jeff

Askimet might well be a good start, it has saved my blog from over 25,000 spam comments with as far as I'm aware no false positives (no 'normal' comments have been caught as spam) and only in the region of 25 false negatives (spam which escaped Askimet's filters).

However, Askimet seems to only be part of the solution, if you use it at all. It'll simply block posts/topics that it thinks is spam whereas ideally the spammers shouldn't be allowed to sign up in the first place (unless Big Zee likes artificially inflated member numbers ). The simple questions/CAPTCHAs would be useful in this respect: "There's no place like TalkFreelance, there's no place like TalkFreelance, there's no place like... [Enter the right word!]"

Originally Posted by Salathe Askimet might well be a good start, it has saved my blog from over 25,000 spam comments with as far as I'm aware no false positives (no 'normal' comments have been caught as spam) and only in the region of 25 false negatives (spam which escaped Askimet's filters). However, Askimet seems to only be part of the solution, if you use it at all. It'll simply block posts/topics that it thinks is spam whereas ideally the spammers shouldn't be allowed to sign up in the first place (unless Big Zee likes artificially inflated member numbers ). The simple questions/CAPTCHAs would be useful in this respect: "There's no place like TalkFreelance, there's no place like TalkFreelance, there's no place like... [Enter the right word!]"

questions/CAPTCHAs is exactly what I was talking about. Better to block the spammers before they signup than just "hide/delete" their posts.