Re: Stopping Spam Members - PLEASE HELP

Posted by GregChapman on
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Stopping-Spam-Members-PLEASE-HELP-tp7598853p7598902.html

Spam is a problem and I have wondered if Nabble have dropped some of their spam protection techniques in the last week weeks as I have certainly seen an increase. However, past experience does suggest that spam posts arrive in waves several weeks long and then they disappear again for a much longer period. So I tend live with them, just deleting the spam posts while they come.

Having said that I did set up one forum with an "Introduce Yourself" area. It is the only area in which newly registered users may post and the Description field explains that they need to say something that explains their interest in joining the forum.  Members can neither post nor reply. The description explains that too. Provided the new user says something that indicates they do appreciate the topic of the forum, then I make them a Member. It certainly does stop the bots from posting on the rest of the forum and human trolls have never been bothered to sign up.

Existing users seem to accept this process as reasonable. The only complaints come from the new users who are not used to a manual joining procedure that requires me to visit the forum regularly to approve them. Not everyone posts immediately after registering, so the registration notification email often comes 24-48 hrs before their first post by which time I've often forgotten about the notification so forget to visit and approve as quickly as they would like - even though the Description warns them of the manual process for approval.