You have spammers coming out of the woodwork! I just saw one newbie probably spam all the news articles with the same add. I say probably, because I didn't check them all just the ones I got a new comment ping. They were all the same user with the same post. This must put an extra load on the mods. Is there a way you could force them to only post to 2 threads the first 24 hrs then allow how many posts they have posted todate plus 1? That would be OK for a real person but would 'kill' a spammer. It would require too much of an investment by having to dream up real postings for a few days before they can rampage. A real newbie will probably post to 1 or possible 2 threads and then reply to the same threads because they got replies. No one is going to save up a dozen different technical questions then ask them all at once. The normal user will only have 1 problem to post. The 2 tread rule will also reduce triple postings at least for the first day. Spammers will learn fast AD sucks for spamming. Then the mods can do moderating instead of garbage detail.
One of the things other site's do is disallow all new users from including any external links until they've made 5 - 10 pots and shown they're a good citizen. It seems to work, discourages the spammers, and they go elsewhere.
That is simple. That will not stop the add/guide person. Those are not nearly as annoying and they add some value.
A new user asks a question and gets a spam response. Why would they come back here. The Moderators can't prevent it and the people who run the site apparently are content to keep it that way. It's now to the point that spammers are camped out on the forums and users are getting emailed to come and read the spam.
So right you are! This site has been dying for the last year or two or maybe it is just the forums I monitor closely. Audio used to have on average 4 new threads in a weekend and more than one new post per day, now you might get 1 real new post a week the rest are audio guides for products. The real ratio is at least 2 free adds per one real post. P2P is just dead. It only gets 2-3 new posts per month. At least there are no adds. We have lost most of our experts either because they were banned or maybe moved on to greener pastures. There is so little action I don't check for new posts very often and when I do there is usually nothing. As I think back I used to spend more than an hr/day answering queries. Some days it would take me several hrs to answer all the questions. Maybe this site is just about dead we just haven't figured it out yet. I notice the lack of AD interest in this thread which pretty much sums up the underlying problem.
