Forum login changes?

[hameau]

... hopefully we dont see much more spam because of it....

But there isn't a lot of spambot action here anyway and they're very easy to spot with the naked eye.

... 3.771 [registed users] here ...

Less than 24 hours later, there are 3.793.

So, what are the benefits, as a spammer, of registering here ? That's the key to the problem, imo. Remove the spammer benefits and – over time – the number of spammer registrations will fall.

It seems to me that the main thing is that there are no restrictions at all on editing posts. I'd suggest starting with locking that down, with a time limit (say, 15 minutes) for quick corrections only. At least that would mean that spam posts, if they're not immediately identified as such, can't mutate later.

Perhaps also removing the ability to include active external links in posts and signatures, though I can imagine that might be less popular. (Still allow links to be written, of course, but nothing to provide backlinks.) Someone else also mentioned adding a 'nofollow' tag to links, which seems worth a try.

I'm sure that there is no instant, guaranteed cure, otherwise we wouldn't be discussing it, but that doesn't mean it's not controllable.