ip bans

[Emzi]

Well, there's 3 settings.

No.1 is an unmoderated setting which means that when people join they can post straight away, even with an invalid email address. That way is attracting a lot of spammers as they can join without giving any real info in and bam - spam away

No.2 is a half-moderated setting where people can join but they need a valid email address as an email will be sent to them to confirm their account. When they confirm they're free to post. If it's an invalid address they can't

No.3 is a fully moderated one, where I'll get an email whenever someone joins and I approve them or not.

The setting it's on now is no.2 because I made a boo-boo and deleted someone who joined who I thought was a spammer, and they weren't (Which I'm sorry about!). So I'll just have to risk spammers putting in proper email addresses - but I am here most of the time so I can delete the posts asap.

Hope this helps

And sorry for the long reply... for some reason I didn't notice these posts.

[willdchild]

is it easy to tell spammers from members???

[Emzi]

Most of the time.

Spammers sometimes tend to fill in the wrong information in the wrong place, like their "username" will be in the location field, and their email address in the "username" field. This along with their username being something un-english is a sign that they're using some sort of automatic form to fill these in and things are going in the wrong place.

There's ones who post their email addresses as something that doesn't exsist. And then there are ones who post their URL - that's often a sign as the URLs link to spam sites.

Generally you can spot spammers because of their username as it'll either be something that doesn't make sense, or something they're trying to spam with (eg. pills4you etc.)

[MollySoo]

Emzi, maybe it's time you went for option 3. I see there's quite a few new 'members' on the list, and they don't seem to be here for good purposes. I'm sure genuine people who want to be members won't mind being vetted before they join. Also if you have any doubts about a person trying to join, you could mention them on here in case it's someone recommended by a present member. Just my thoughts on the matter.

[squeezing_mwah]

I agree, Molly