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So I was thinking, to help stop

1) Spambots
2) People who join to ask about best dressup or whatever in a new thread

Is it possible at all to make it so anyone under say 10 posts cannot create a new thread anywhere aside from the Lounge subforum (where people will make intro threads)

What do you guys think of this idea?

This post has been edited by WRX22B1998 on Mar 2 2014, 06:20 AM

It's definitely a good idea, WRX.

The only drawback for this method is if someone new who just signed up needs to post a genuine thread about some news or some fanfictions. Of course, it only affects a very small portion of the people, but I still don't like forcing newcomers to post in a certain area before they can start thread.

Also, spambots don't just make new threads. They can also reply too. This idea needs more brainstorming. Feel free to chime in, everyone. We need your brains.

Hm, maybe it can be evaluated and approved by the higher ups before it can be posted.

Then again it might be subject to bias by said higher ups. o:

Is a captcha system out of the question?

can't believe i forgot about that one

Captcha is not foul-proof unfortunately. There are spambots out there that are "half machine half human." They use human to bypass registration process then use bots to spam posts. The only way to rid spambots are through algorithm detection and posting behaviors. The current security measure we have is a newly registered user will have their first 10 posts analyzed and if these posts contain more than a pre-determined threshold of spam keywords, then their are automatically disabled.

Of course, there are still way to bypass this. Such as posting normally in the first 10 posts, then spam after that...

Combating with spambots is a never-ending battle.

Locking off sections of the forum until they make an introduction thread is something I've seen on a couple of other forums and they are spam-free.

to clarify i didn't actually mean to lock the rest of the forum, just that they aren't allowed to make new threads elsewhere but can still post in existing threads.

but yeah true that people can bypass captcha and then let the bots do the rest ... i guess there's not really many other ways around it

This post has been edited by WRX22B1998 on Mar 4 2014, 04:49 AM