As many of you may have noticed a lot of spam has been getting by on the forum multiple times daily. I have been doing my best to quickly delete them and the users.

I have changed a few settings in the forum's database hopefully making these spam bots and posts appear multiple times a day.

I know we all dislike the spam, but I probably hate it the most. Deleting the users/spam is just mostly consuming, but the main reason I hate it is seeing the mess and clutter that the forum becomes. I just want to make sure that the site is clean and enjoyable for everyone to view and read at the same time... well that's my job as the forum's moderator.

Anyways, we'll see if these changes work, hopefully registration will be a little more tough for these bots to get through.

If anyone discovers any oddities and/or problems using the forum with these new changes in effect, please let me know.

Thanks!

Well as some as you have probably seen these new countermeasures aren't working as well as I thought (though it did cut down a few).

From what I can see all the spam countermeasure settings are turned on to the max without the CAPTCHAs being virtually impossible to read. One "general" setting I see which could prevent the spam from appearing is to have new members wait for admin approval before posting which I'd really hate to do especially since there isn't someone always tending the forum (I check it as often as I can though).

The only other option is to reinstall the forum and update it to the latest version but that would take quite some time and be a little tedious (in other words it's not that I don't want to do it, it's just I don't want to screw anything up).

As for now, I hope you can still enjoy the forum as it is and I'm doing my best to remove the spam. In due time an end will come of all this cause as of right now it's pissing me off.

Thanks for all your efforts, Jim!

Hi, I know I don't post here a lot but I do check in every day so I'd be more than happy to deal with the spam if you'd be willing to make me a moderator/admin. I've done it before on the Wildhearts forum so it shouldnt be a problem for me. I'm in the UK so I'm on a different time to you so it could work like a shift pattern so there could always be someone checking in if that that makes sense.

As of right now Jakob and I are in the process of installing a new forum which we both believe will take care of a lot of this spam. In doing so the current forums' posts will all be carried over to the new one so nothing will be lost.

Even though he's not on as often, Jakob (who lives in Sweden) still takes care of the spam when he's on the site. If the problem does persist once we have installed the new forum, I'm sure we'll possibly consider hiring a moderator. As of right now I appreciate your concern and thanks for willing to help out.

We'll see how this new forum turns out (I'm not sure when it will be ready), but lets hope for the best.

Jim,

Thanks for all your hard work around here. If you need more help, I work on the internet from home and sometimes work odd hours and would be willing to Mod the forums some. Also what version of phpBB are you running and have you tried Q&A captcha yet? It seems to stop the bots who can access the stock image captcha pics and by pass your image based Captcha.

I have moderated several phpBB boards and ran a couple for the Urban Exploring community in the Twin Cities, I get how frustrating dealing with spam all the time can be. I am trying to check this site more often and hopefully with the band's increased activity this spring, get more involved in conversations. Missing my SA!

Mark

Right now the current version for this forum is 3.0.8 which is a pretty outdated in terms of computer time (Jakob updated it a couple years back). The one we're going to have on the new forum will be running the latest version 3.0.12 which was released in September.

As for the Q&A Captcha program I'll definitely use that on the new forum. We've just been using the various stock Captcha's, including an additional registration question, but that has since become no use.

I work nights so when I get home I almost always check the site first thing and usually right before I leave so I try to get rid of the spam as soon as possible.

Again if the new forum (I'll have it up before the next SA album ) does continue to get plagued with spam I'll consider some moderators, especially if the guys got more activity going on with touring and a new album.