Spam's a big pile of crap.
From now onwards any thread started by a spammer will be DELETED in it's entirety. This is the only situation where deletion of an entire thread is the chosen solution.
If you find a spam thread, please email me (guess my email :P).
It may also be a good idea to have another mod, just to help delete the spam and for no other reason?
I call mod, since I discovered the spam threads!
Also, how does a bot create a thread?
At my old forum, we'd delete the thread, the user, search for other users with the same ip and delete them, then ban the ip and email. If a conversation started in the thread, we deleted the user and edited out the OP with something witty, moved it to a forum bin and then let people carry on talking if they wanted. Of course, that was super time consuming so being anything other than a student makes that system pretty much unsustainable.
I know what to do about spam, not click on it like a retard...well i know to do that now.
@ John, isn't another mod who just deletes spam threads a binman? 
I've only been here a short time and I've gathered the only mod apart from yourself is Faye Lanks, so yeah another mod would quickly resolve spam threads
Oh spam.. I've been there too, I used to be an admin on some forums that were targetted for spam too, so I can understand how annoying it is etc (@ UglyDuck yeah we used to do the same thing). A bot can easily create a thread, programs know which buttons to press, I've seen them create hundreds for threads (gladly not all in one go.. most of the time), although how it exactly works I don't know. Did we not have CAPTCHA or am I mistaken? That can be cracked by bots as well though.
I missed the actual thread this time but perhaps another mod would be wise (I vote Adushan).
Am I a bad mod? I love NZ but I work a near full time job too and despite catching a couple of the spam threads I'm not always looking..
Feel free to email me too @ flowerofthept at hotmail dot com with spam things, let John work on money things. I at least check email constantly.
Make sushi out of it!
This seems like the most suitable place to put this little update. I've done things. THINGS.
* Registration can now only happen on the main site, rather than on the main site and the forum (the main site has a more complex sign up better equipped to detect spammers)
* The 4k posts marked as spam have been deleted, as have a lot of tags
* The database has been optimised. This means I gave it a hug after deleting half of its data.
The forum will run a bit faster, and spam sign-ups may be reduced.
Well then. This morning Akismet seemed to go down and the spammers got through. It's sort of ruined what was a lovely afternoon.
Time for new forum software I think?
Ugh... The one day I take off to entertain guests...
I manually re-spammed the posts, but it may be time to start working on more ways to stop it, if it continues. I've got a few plugins I'm going to try with the forum.
I don't program, so I apologise if my suggestion makes no sense, but would changing the URL ever so slightly to... Theforum.nukezilla.com or something help against the bots?
Confession: when I here the word "spam" in a British accent, all I can think about is the Monty Python spam skit. Does that make me a bad person?
Changing the forum wouldn't help all that much as it would be re-found again.
And I think that's a perfectly fine thing to be reminded of.
So, I'm getting a touch more aggressive with our anti-spam arsenal. Let me know if you find yourself unable to post, or your connection to the server denied.
Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam, SPAMMITY SPAAAAM!
Oh and this doesn't make you a bad person. Using 'here' instead of 'hear' does.
I say whoever's filtering the bad stuff is doing a good job. I can't see any spam.
@Adushan Shit. I'll just go jump off a cliff now 
@Meagan - Noo! Don't do that! That's egg-xactly what the spam bots want you to do! Those evil pigs!
@meagan just ignore him when Adushan's bean obnoxious.
I think Faye is too egg-citable. We need to discuss spam without over-egging the issue.
But seriously, what are the implications of changing software? Would all posts disappear? Would we lose our super sexy titles? Would we need to re-register? What about avatars? Would we lose or gain any functionality? Would it be easier to moderate?
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