There seems to be very little activity here now other than spammers using dodgy posts to advertise their websites, which I keep editing out.

Are we dead in the water? No one seems to come here any more, and unless we try to deter the spammers, soon any useful information on here will be drowned by the tide of crap...

I've now changed my actions on anything I perceive as spam. Most of the dodgy posts consist of a poorly-written reply which claims 'this of much interest in me try lose weight', or whatever, then a spam address or two tacked on or in the message. There was also a spate of copy and pasted messages from other forums (I searched the text strings on Google), with similar spam URLs in.

Whereas I was originally editing out any URLs, I've now started deleting whole posts - I hope I'm not exceeding my remit here, but no one else seems to be keeping an eye on things.

I'm thinking it might be an idea to give people a warning when they post like this (thus giving them a chance to show we've got it wrong, in the unlikely event we do), then if they do it again, permaban them. It might seem harsh, but boards soon drown under a flood of spam if you're not careful, and good boards go to the wall as no one wants to use a board like that.

I'm a moderator on a motorcycle related board, and we've had a major battle there with spammers, but with careful message moderation and filters in place to weed out potential spammers as they sign up, we've won the war against them.

Well, I've just done my first ban. The guy's had two warnings, and less than an hour later he did it again. His poorly worded, barely relevant posts were always accompanied by a spam link for fraxel surgery, breast surgery of chiropractors. I've had enough. THis kind of stuff isn't relevant to the board, and will only drag it down in the long run. I just wish there were a few others to help me deal with all this stuff before the board dies on its arse...

I really appreciate you keeping an eye on things! I just recently had a baby and she is 2 months old now. She doesn't let me get on the computer very much to check on things!

Congratulations Tammy!