Message Boards / Forums

I would recommend www.nasaspaceflight.com as an example site to look at. I believe they list their software somewhere. Another example is http://artshouston.ning.com/ which uses something called ning.

One (annoying) way to stop robotic spam is to add that step where you see an image of some letters and you have to enter those letters in order to post, but I hate doing that.

In every community I've ever been in, it's been the mods who keep things under control.

From our experience there aren't any effective software systems for keeping Spammers out. If its a commercial software, like vbulletion or phbbb, the spammers already know the system inside out and they'll defeat whatever fixes you try to put in. And they'll come in manually to defeat the "type these letters" human identification systems.

I think we do a pretty good job here on CR4, but it's mostly due to a dedicated moderation team.

And we all really appreciate!

Hear Hear. I have three lairs of anti spam on my system and still some gets in. CR4 does a great job.

Brad

the use of turing tests or capchas followed be deletion of spam accounts will minimize the problem. Forcing response to be moderator approved works, and if the capcha works there will not be much of a moderator load.

downside = nothing shows until approved.

upside = best way.

http://www.thepcspy.com/kittenauth

http://www.thepcspy.com/read/the_cutest_humantest_kittenauth

Is it thàt difficult to only accept posts and/or emails from members (with password) ?

Don't assume that spammers only use bots. More often than not individual spammers will register with your site and post their junk.

many thanks for all of your advice; it is much appreciated. We will need to strike the right balance between keeping out the spammers and making the board usable enough for the real members.

One additional question. Does a board need to be connected to a website, or can it stand alone?

Best Regards

John The Jacket

I'm member of many automotive forum/board. Most of them use pbb and there are measures to reduce spam bots. Most of it is done on user registration. Confirmation email, entering code from a picture etc. After that its banning/removing user and ip.

The forum don't need to be on a website but you do need a registered URL.

Thanks Pineapple, much appreciated.