spam idea?

[silverkitty23]

Because our moderators don't have enough to do(*):
I for one would be fine with removing the "no link in first post" restriction and replacing it with "your first post goes to moderation. you can't make a second post unless the first post was approved"

Then again, blah. I guess it wouldn't help. They'd just reprogram their bots to make a new account for every post, and while the end-users wouldn't get any spam, the poor moderators would be deluged with it and might miss some valid first posts and then we've pissed people off.

Sigh. Nevermind. Ignore this post. There's no winning, is there?


(*) that's sarcasm, see

[TruePikachu]

I'm thinking that a better decision would be that you can make additional posts, but in order to post URLs of any sort (which includes links), it needs to be activated by somebody who can already post URLs; the best way to do this would be a "Confirm this isn't a spambot" button in the signature area (only visible to and clickable by people who have URL privilege) which, when clicked, would issue a captcha request via javascript (we don't want to take people to a different page). When the captcha is completed, the user who gave the privilege is logged and the target user is granted the ability to post URLs or links.

I'm not sure how well this can be implemented into stock phpBB, though. It would, however, allow for other users to grant permission, and allow tracking of abuse of the system (since the actions are logged).

EDIT: Spammers won't bother with spamming to the moderators instead of end users because it is a waste of time. Only if someone is being actively malicious would that be a concern, and even then it can be curbed somewhat easily (since it is a single person, and there is always a pattern).