Set up a CAPTCHA holmes.

[Jayce]

What the title says...
I think we can all agree that the pornbots are annoying and I'm pretty sure a captcha is easy to set up on the registration form.

[ConMan]

This. Surely a CAPTCHA is better than having to deal with what is now a ridiculous number of spambots.

[NIQ9]

Scott is against the Captcha because it would be too hard to read for most people

but at this point, after deleting 63 bot posts, I fully support the idea of a captcha.

I'd rather not spend a half hour deleting posts as soon as I wake up.

[MacGravel]

Why not use one of those math problems? 1 + 1 = ?

How could anyone NOT get that.

[NIQ9]

Because phpBB3 doesn't have a mod like that?
i dunno

I suggested something like "What Does ITG stand for?"

[Kyzentun]

Because phpBB3 doesn't have a mod like that?
i dunno

I suggested something like "What Does ITG stand for?"

ITG stands for "In The F---". The language filter just changes it to groove.


I have an idea. Since everybody (except me) lurked for months before posting, just put a forced one week wait in before allowing a new account to post. Just put up a message along the lines of "Due to bot activity, we have been forced to make new accounts wait before allowing them to post. You will be able to post in one week. While you're waiting, feel free to read the threads and play the files.".
Plus it'll do something about those people that post an intro thread and are never seen again.

[MacGravel]

I have an idea. Since everybody (except me) lurked for months before posting, just put a forced one week wait in before allowing a new account to post. Just put up a message along the lines of "Due to bot activity, we have been forced to make new accounts wait before allowing them to post. You will be able to post in one week. While you're waiting, feel free to read the threads and play the files.".
Plus it'll do something about those people that post an intro thread and are never seen again.

I don't know, that doesn't sound like something this site should do.

[sssmsm]

Unfortunately phpbb doesn't allow for custom registration requirements, so I can't make a question like "what does ITG stand for?" or anything like that. I only have the option of using or not using a graphic that new users have to read letters/numbers off of, and making that graphic harder or easier to read. I did not like the idea of making it too hard, because making it to the point where a bot would find it hard to read also makes it extremely difficult for a normal person to read, especially for anyone with eye issues.

However, in the wake of such persistent bot problems, I've decided to significantly up the difficulty anyway. After playing around with the settings, I put it on a difficulty where I can get it right about half the time, and even then it's not easy, as opposed to 100% of the time easily as it was before. Hopefully this well help in bot annoyance reduction.

Also, usually taking care of things like a single bot posting 100+ topics is not really an issue, since I can just delete a user and delete all their posts in the admin control panel. It is unfortunate that this most recent incident happened while I was asleep