spam - Can someone help?

[mrsleep]

Hey

I run a small community over at http://vegiac.com and people are posting spam. They are going through the whole verification process and everything and then wait for a while then three members post nonsense gibberish and that's it, then I one click ban/delete them. How do I get them to stop altogether? I don't know what to do.

I even have post limits set so they can't post links, but they just keep posting gibberish. Any idea? :confused:

[musclenexus]

You are experiencing the biggest problem with forums and blogs today. Spam ruins so many sites.

Read this
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=288234

The one thing I STRONGLY DISCOURAGE is to moderate new members. If you do, expect your forum to grow at a crawl and you'll have a bunch of users that will never come back. I speak out of experience on more than 1 forum. Moderating new members is the last resort, it's almost like shooting yourself in the foot.

[Mermaid]

You are experiencing the biggest problem with forums and blogs today. Spam ruins so many sites.

Read this
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=288234

The one thing I STRONGLY DISCOURAGE is to moderate new members. If you do, expect your forum to grow at a crawl and you'll have a bunch of users that will never come back.

That may be true, but what i do is periodically check newly registered users. Most spammer have gmail or (more obviously) .ru addresses and usernames that are easy to spot once you get experienced at it. I sometimes cross check usernames, email or IP with stopforumspam.com.

I put all of these into a moderated group and so far it works quite well.

Some are there to post spam, others seem to be just happy to have a link to their stupid site in the user profile. After banning, I change the link to stopforumspam.com

[musclenexus]

I actually check all new registrations. I just never moderate them through vbulletin. That thing where they can't do anything until you approve. I find that is the worst thing to do. But I do go back and check who registered. If it's an IP from Asia (india), I'll delete it from my site. If it's somewhere like the uk or places that aren't really relevent to my canadian site, I'll move them into a watched group where their posts have to be moderated before showing. 90% of it ends up being either spam or a person that never posts. I end up deleting the member after awhile. I have a bunch of advertisers on my forum and I assure them each one of my members is a valid member. Too many forums try to pass themselves off as having a large membership when a large percentage of it is dead accounts or spam accounts that never post. If one wishes to advertise on a site, it would be very wise to find out how many actual good members a site has.