Hi everyone,

We got a sudden rush of spam recently so in order to interrupt the momentum I've made a change to the forum.

At least for 1 week, I am going to manually filter all users who try to register to the forum.

Spam protection is a double edged sword, the more protection you put up, the more you alienate the regular users and we don't want to do that. But spam is also destructive. So any new users will have to be manually approved before being added to the site.

This should calm things down for a bit and let me look at some of the spammers as they create new accounts. I hope to go back to the user verified email address confirmation at the end of the week and look into other forms of spam prevention for the future.

Thank you

Thanks Karl, they have been in full force lately!

Thanks Karl. They had seemed to quiet down but now they're back in full force. I just sent one over that even titled their post Youth Jerseys. *shakes head*

Thanks, this will only stop NEW spammers from signing up, but will allow me to see if they are somehow circumventing the signup process altogether (in which no matter how many CAPCHAs I add won't do anything) or have some dormant accounts they wake up to spam later.

In any case, it should lessen from before and I can still ban any new ones that pop up.

Thanks Karl - I appreciate all the work you are putting into this for us. I hope this works!!

Thanks Karl!!

Looks like spam prevention week is a success. In the middle of back to back spam. We went through 1 full week with NO SPAM!

Looks like manually going through the users may be the way to go, I only noticed a very small inconvenience to new signers to the site compared to the damage spam can cause.

I am now considering leaving new registrants to be manually activated by me. I did see spammers as they tried to sign up and I can leave them unactivated and unable to post/spam at will.

What do you guys think of this?

Sounds good to me Karl. A week without spam was wonderful!

It was a wonderful week without spam, Karl. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I think most people who join websites are accepting of waiting for a manual approval because they can expect a secure community to visit. I'm all for it.

It was wonderful indeed! Thank you.

Awesome week Karl - thanks so much for doing this - no spam is great!!

Thanks, again, Karl!!!

Thanks Karl, you did great!!!!