Like you, I've noticed the increase in new members who seem to know nothing about turtles and tortoises.
Its very hard to be a moderator and NOT be the Moderator Nazi. How do I distinguish between a person who has joined to discuss or read about turtles and tortoises and one who just joined to get his name out on the internet?
Usually, when I suspect a spammer, its because they have a link in their signature such as b l u e t o o t h, or an actual link you're supposed to click on. What I've been doing is removing the link or the word from their signature line. But a couple of them have been savvy enough to put the link back.
I did a GOOGLE search on forum spammers and came up with this very good explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_spam
One of the thing the Wiki article tells me I can do is to search the username through GOOGLE. The couple of names that you've recently seen with a line through them showing they've been banned came up in the search as having joined numerous forums recently. So I was sure that they were spammers and I banned them. But I'm very uncomfortable in just arbitrarily banning new members. What if I make a mistake?
One thing you all can do to help is DO NOT click on the link in their signature. But we have to err on the safe side. Please don't offend a REAL new member by accusing them of being a spammer.
I've also noticed that the forum has been very slow lately. Moving from one screen to the next has almost been like the difference between dial-up and DSL. Don't know if that's because of all the spammers or not.
I'll try to keep on the ball and stay in front of this problem. I'm sorry it has to be this way. Makes it hard for all of us to have to deal with it.
Its very hard to be a moderator and NOT be the Moderator Nazi. How do I distinguish between a person who has joined to discuss or read about turtles and tortoises and one who just joined to get his name out on the internet?
Usually, when I suspect a spammer, its because they have a link in their signature such as b l u e t o o t h, or an actual link you're supposed to click on. What I've been doing is removing the link or the word from their signature line. But a couple of them have been savvy enough to put the link back.
I did a GOOGLE search on forum spammers and came up with this very good explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_spam
One of the thing the Wiki article tells me I can do is to search the username through GOOGLE. The couple of names that you've recently seen with a line through them showing they've been banned came up in the search as having joined numerous forums recently. So I was sure that they were spammers and I banned them. But I'm very uncomfortable in just arbitrarily banning new members. What if I make a mistake?
One thing you all can do to help is DO NOT click on the link in their signature. But we have to err on the safe side. Please don't offend a REAL new member by accusing them of being a spammer.
I've also noticed that the forum has been very slow lately. Moving from one screen to the next has almost been like the difference between dial-up and DSL. Don't know if that's because of all the spammers or not.
I'll try to keep on the ball and stay in front of this problem. I'm sorry it has to be this way. Makes it hard for all of us to have to deal with it.