Forum Spam

you could probably eliminate the whole thing by having a confirmation link sent to an email when someone tries to starts a new account

That's a good idea. It will cut down on list of 'kills' per month though. "You know, some day this war's going to end...."

IMHO - Any software that cannot afford to advertise properly and resorts to putting up spam ads on a regular basis is highly suspect. I for one would be very wary of a software vendor like that - I worry about either quality on the lower risk side or malware/trojans on the higher risk side.

I don't know a whole helluvalot about this subject - it might be annoying for real posters, but what about having to do a captcha in order to post a new topic?

Personally I'm so used to captchas it wouldn't be too bad. The spamming can be somewhat irritating, and potentially misleading to those unaware of the dangers.

I like the Captcha idea. If that is embraced here on VM, you guys should use the captcha that is 2 words.

I saw a show on TV about the guy who invented Captcha. The captcha that uses 2 words is used for digitizing books. When a computer scans an page of a book, but can't recognize a word due to the book being so old, Captcha is used to get a human to figure it out.

The first word is a word that the Captcha knows (that way it can confirm it's a human at the computer), and the second word is from the damaged/old book.

Respectfully, I ask that we not go the CAPTCHA route. It will significantly limiit my involvement. I like posting when I can quickly express my thoughts, but in this day and age of instant gratification on the internet (I refuse to sit through commercials anymore, for example) the extra effort needed to post will make me (and I suspect others) move on.

I've noticed that other forums I've belonged to (music, cartoons, guns, politics, other topics) that have CAPTCHA have fewer members than the ones that don't.

Also, my blog is almost free of comments and I refuse to believe it's solely due to my content. ;)

As for spam, I've noticed one here or there, but I'm not overwhelmed by it (my inbox is different, on the other hand).

Just my input.

Actually, pseudosafari, you might not be "overwhelmed" by the spam because, I don't know about the others here, but I personally delete an average of three-to-four a day. If other moderators are hitting that average, then a significant number of these are being eliminated BEFORE they have a chance TO overwhelm you :-)

"... a significant number of these are being eliminated BEFORE they have a chance TO overwhelm you."

Oh yeah, right around midnight EST they really start poppin' up! If no one was knocking them off, the forums would get overrun faster than zombies in "28 Days Later"!

I am a fan of Zombie movies, but not spam. If it's that big a problem, then I suspect sifting through spam you didn't delete would likely be as big an inconvenience to me as the CAPTCHA would be. So, (a) I thank you for deleting them, and (b) can you try the confirmation link first THEN go to CAPTCHA if need be?

I really like this forum and do thank you for keeping it going like this.

I'm usually on between 6AM and 8AM Eastern and have deleted upwards of half a dozen a day (some days others must get to them first 'cause I don't see any). I have gone on throughout the day at various times and found them.

I must say I've been tempted to leave them up, only putting a huge disclaimer at the top of each post that this is a spam ad and the software has neither been tested nor endorsed by VM, plus I don't know anyone personally who has used it - That might slow them down...