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On the MSE forums I noticed they give the people who post a lot the option to hide posts with bad content or spam until an admin has chance to check, given how much spam we get it may be a good option to add here, don't know how hard it would be to add though.

Or even an option where if a set number of long term members can vote that something is spam and say 3 do then the post is hidden.

The spam here is getting annoying and I'm sure it would improve the fourm and people would like it! If its possible..

Db

Agreed, I'm sure most of the guys here would be more than happy to help.

i'd be more than happy to help with that

maybe if it was for members less than a month old or under 10 posts...

I've put a lot of work into our anti-spam measures over recent weeks, but more must be done.
This is an excellent idea and I'll look I to implementing it.

I've now blocked most of the dodgy countries of the world from the site. The USA and France remain the worst unfortunately. But I can't really block them altogether.

why not
the only people who come on here from America are pua guru's trying to spam there products also france is shit!

to be fair twisted think you do a pretty good job considering the amount of indexed posts if you want to eliminate it completely
there's a slide captcha that's been out for a while that xrumer wont be able to solve.
also setting a captcha that is only visible to bot's using hidden html tag may work(if it get filled out marks as spam account at server and delete)

This is a great idea.

I think the best way to go by this is to simply 'close' off the thread creating features and thread commenting features in all other topics apart from Introductions. Then after their first post, the Beginners pick-up topic can be opened up to them. Then after 5/10 posts all other forum topics can be opened up to them.

Sure fire way to filter out the spammers and keep the genuine members.

Will look into that.
A lot of captchas are solved these days by humans, then the bots take over.
I have heared about the hidden tags technique too, may throw some of these into the mix and see how they go.
We currently have about 4 measures in place to stop spam, including blocking half the world's countries from even accessing us. You can imagine how bad it would be if they were all turned off!

We actually do this to an extend. New members are restricted from lots of features. I'd hate to prevent them starting a thread just to stop spammers so it's a difficult decision. I might have to take that step though.

You could do as I suggested but then add a decision query that allows other forum members to assist the admin by introducing a poll-like feature to the new member for the existing members to say if the user is genuine or not. If more than 2 existing members say the new member is genuine then all restrictions will be lifted.
If multiple existing users say the new user isn't genuine then it can be flagged.

Maybe a better approach? And allows the community to help out the admin

I'm living in Canada atm. Chances are if you block out America, I would be too :( sad times.