Trying to register?

[Luke]

We are receiving higher than usual attempts by spammers to register on this forum at this time. Each attempt is screened, but if you try and register over the weekend or choose an unusual username, there is a chance that your registration attempt will be lost in the mix.

Please be patient and try registering again later.

[Luke]

Weekend traffic is currently extremely high. As such, genuine registrations during this time have a high chance of not being seen and approved.

[admin]

I have made some changes to the way new user registration happens. To reduce the load on the mods, new users no longer require approval to join.

HOWEVER: Newly registered users have basically no permission to post to anything, ever.

Once you have registered an account, please go over to the "New Members" section of Administravia and post a new topic requesting your account be changed to a registered user.

[Mike Sands]

I can see three new spam posts in the ten minutes since you posted

[Luke]

Yep. I have disabled registrations for now, though left those spammers that have got through remain for admin to look at.

[Colin]

Try Anti Spam question

I'd suggest not using the question and answer in the link, but come up with a new one.

It works well for me.

[Luke]

Thanks Colin. The forum has several Captcha style barriers, but for some reason they aren't working (though I am not the technical guy talking )

[Colin]

Captcha basically relies on an image; something that OCR can defeat...which is how I presume Spambots defeat it.

Whereas if you ask a question that relies on human input to give the proper textual answer, this is much harder on Spambots.

Another way that might be causing problems is if you've created a new template which has the anti-spam measures, but have left the old version around...which does not. I've discovered that newer Spambots switch to the old template if it is at all accessible.

[Luke]

Captcha basically relies on an image; something that OCR can defeat...which is how I presume Spambots defeat it.

Whereas if you ask a question that relies on human input to give the proper textual answer, this is much harder on Spambots.

Another way that might be causing problems is if you've created a new template which has the anti-spam measures, but have left the old version around...which does not. I've discovered that newer Spambots switch to the old template if it is at all accessible.

Thanks. The issue was because a forum software upgrade happily reset all our settings.

As for Captcha, agreed. There is also inbuilt ability to pose questions rather than use images. I suggested it to Admin a while back, who is currently investigating the matter but hasn't come back to me. I have adopted that in the meantime to test to see if it works.

[Luke]

This seems to have been fixed for now. Registrations are open again.