New members now require moderation

[iceman]

Hi all

To combat the influx of spammers lately, I've now turned on 'new member moderation'.

So any new members now need to be 'approved' before they have permission to post.

Spammers will just be stuck in the queue and not approved, and new legitimate members will be permitted to join.

It might mean a small delay for new members before they're able to post - apologies for any inconvenience, but it's better than continuing with how it is now, and the current effort the moderators have to go to to keep deleting and banning the bots and spammers.

Thanks

[Octane]

Top work, guys. :)

H

[Atmos]

It is always difficult to find the balance time wise between screening new users and cleaning up the mess. Hope this works better :)

[Nikolas]

Excellent work!!

[JA]

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Best
JA

[jenchris]

Astronomy Forum has been getting 50 spammers a day.
Getting tiring swinging the hammer

[Regulus]

Good call Mike.
Genuinely interested parties aren't going to be fazed by having to wait a day or so.
A message delivery to new members that outline the rules is probably a good idea too (Can thast be automated in the system?), so they know up front what is tolerated, and what is not.

Trevor

[DarkArts]

Good stuff. :thumbsup:

On forum I used to help out on a few years ago, we had a terrible problem with spammers. IIRC there was a vBulletin module that checked blocked IP addresses (reported via spam-o-matic to stopforumspam, plus we checked Spamhaus or similar) and prevented registrations. That got the bots, but there were still some human spammers that got through. Auto moderation was a big help, but even then, a handful of determined spammers waited out the first five moderated posts (as I think it was) to be able to spam. Still, this'll cut it down enormously.

[AEAJR]

certainly understandable.

May I suggest that new members get a welcome message/email explaining this? I don't recall if I received such an e-mail when I joined.

It must take tremendous dilligence to get new members approved quickly.

If I were new and went to post and did not see anything show up I would expect the forum was broken and move on. Would not want that to happen to new members. Do they get some kind of message?

[multiweb]

I suspect not even close to the time spent cleaning up the spam. :)

[RB]

This.

[iceman]

Working great!

Out of 50+ in the moderation queue, only 6 legitimate members (which I approved).

It might take a day or two to get approved, but much better (for everyone else, especially the moderators) than the alternative.

[sheeny]

:thumbsup:

[Shano592]

Awesome stuff, Mike.

That's using your black-belt moderation skills! :lol:

[N1]

Good work, and the forum is worth the wait.
Make this a sticky perhaps.