Prince of Persia

(This topic will be global until the legion of spambots has been stopped. Then it will be deleted.)

It's no news anymore that spambots have started to flood the forum. Some are even "spamming" into the Introductions forum where they introduce themselves. Now a moderator/administrator/whatever who's banning lots of spambots with their IP's and posts a day will start to get into doubt: Are these real members or are they spambots, too?

Now no one likes to ban some innocent member who just freshly registered here for no apparent reason at all, other than mistaking him for a spambot, right? So I thought something up: When someone posts in the introductory forums and the post isn't very informative about the person at all, then we can presume it to be a spambot, and ban him. You can also tell if it's a spambot if they're not talking about Prince of Persia at all... Or if they have some link in their post somewhere. Also, spambots have a distinctive style of writing, which one can tell by experience.

It's a good idea to me... I'll leave this topic open for discussing. If you excuse me... I'm off banning some spambots.

I have taken it as a custom to delete every "introductory" post that appears in the PoP2 forum, even if there are no spam links in that post.

Pfft. I don't care if it's a spambot or someone real - to post in such an obscene and bizarre manner wasting both their time and ours is a good enough excuse to ban them.

A real member who's remotely interested in this forum might easily see this topic, so in that case I would think it all right to go back to his introductory post and add there that he is not a spambot. I doubt real spambots are so intelligent as to be able to do what I have said. So it would be a fair clue to the true identity of a member.

Yet what Musicmaker said is true - offensive posts may require a member - be him human - to be banned.

PSSSHHH WHATEVER!

OH MY GOD

Don't panic - we've got everything under control... I think.

What I mean is, just don't ever post into a spam thread.

Ye, just mark them as read, and wait for them to be deleted