Need a few new moderators.

[dhempy]

Looking for a few Locosters in good standing to step up as moderators. The only real requirement is that you are a good community member with a positive history on the site. Bonus points if you visit LocostUSA.com addictively.

You will have visibility in the TORRENT of spam posts that come in. You can delete them, and ban the bots if it makes you feel good. Or let all that crap pile up, which is fine, too.

The REAL service you will volunteer to the community is approving genuine posts from actual, interested humans. Those newcomers are probably underserved at this time, crippled in their posting power until a mod notices their introductory posts in the flood of flotsam. In this duty, you will be the unknown hero of our new comrades.

Shoot me a PM if you're interested. Feel free to nominate someone you admire.

[dhempy]

Just a sampling of what the bots are doing to us. 24x7, we get dozens of spam posts per hour. Banning and deleting users is pointless...they create new accounts far faster.

[Bent Wrench]

Manual approval of new accounts.....

You can't fight it from the posting end, they can't spam if they can't open an account.

To stop old accounts with weak passwords from being violated,
inactive accounts of 6 months (can be reduced to 90 days) are put into quarantine that requires moderator re-activation.

[KB58]

I also have a forum that uses PHPBB and used to have open registration for a short time... hah, nope. Changed it to manual approval but sadly, it's no better, it just takes the fight behind closed doors. Of new registration attempts, 99.9% are from sketchy organizations or countries. Some try to hide behind bizarre usernames or sketchy looking email addresses. Others seem to think that I won't care - such as using their actual email like, "instantonlinegambling.com." It became so bad that I've disabled ALL new registrations for now. In my case it's not crippling because I don't get much traffic. If someone really, actually, sincerely wants on, they can send me an email and ask. I think I've received one in the last few years. Anyway, for a big website, yeah, it's a never-ending battle.