Windshield Repair Forum

Wouldn’t it be a good thing to put any new members’ post on hold, for evaluation by the forum moderators? It can easily be done, just extend the existing rule where the full use of all board features is limited until "after" they have posted a minimum of 10 posts (quoted from forum guidelines).

It really becomes very annoying that too many so called new people are littering the forum in an attempt to promote their !#$%! useless products and services >stuff we really do not need or want. I for one do not need their drugs, internet services or *** related web sites.
I would say to all those so called new members; If you want to promote your stuff, find a different medium and pay for it! Just like any other normal and proper business.

To any genuine new member I would say; please keep on posting here, your input is important and appreciated, any new member can post as much as he or she likes, but the post will only be published on the forum with a delay, after the moderators have scanned the content. Nothing really happens with posts that are really about our industry and appropriate, ie;
-Windshield Repair
-Windshield Replacement
-Headlight Restoration
-Pintless Dent Repair
-For Sale
-Forum Feedback
-Water Cooler
-New Forum Format Issues

All other non related stuff than no longer will be visible which makes their attempts to promote their stuff for free pretty useless. Also; the moderator than can contact those people in writing, using a standard letter as a warning to demotivate >referring to rule #5 in the guidelines.

I am confident that this littering happens at other forums (or fora) as well, and I am confident that all the good willing and hard working people who are involved in those forums have many, many better things to do. To constantly delete silly free commercials is just too time consuming while it also demotivates the people who are serving us, the members.

This morning alone our so called new member ShakhtarrDon dumped 11 useless messages on the board.
I realize that other genuine new members will also be affected by this, but it really got to be ended and this is just one way to do it. I am confident that any new (genuine) member will understand a step like this.
Of course I have no say at all in this, but as a member I just find it annoying and this is just an idea. What do you think?

I agree and that's how many other forums work. I think it would be pretty simple for the moderators to take a quick look at a person's username and profile before they can start posting.

Did I mention how annoying it is to sign on to a great forum like this and wade through the spam posted here. I don't need to look at this garbage here, I get enough in my email.

I understand and share your frustration with the amount of spam that we have to deal with, but it's not quite as simple as you might think. We are working on the problem, but it seems the spammers have more time and technology to work with than we do, so it's an ongoing battle. We generally identify and remove spam posts and ban the poster within a few hours, and we try to get to it much quicker than that.

We can manually approve every new member, but people are used to instant access and don't like to wait for anything these days. Actually we tested this just a few days ago but due to a bug in the programming on the board regular members were sent the activation requests, which caused a flurry of e-mails from unhappy members. People join the forum primarily because they have something they want to post. I don't frequent other forums much, but when I do I join so I can ask a question. If my question were to be put on hold for several hours while I waited for manual approval I probably would not visit that forum again, and I think a lot of other people would do the same. That may be the direction that we have to go, but I hope we will be able to find a better solution.

If I am wrong and you really do know a "simple" way to stop the spam using the technology incorporated into the programming of this board or a tested mod for the board, please give me a call. In fact, post it on the phpBB forum and you will be a hero to thousands of other forum moderators who are experiencing the same problem.

I appreciate your patience while we research modifications that will help us minimize spam on this forum.

Brent, indeed you are right that some people do not have the patience and do not want to wait, instead they want anything right now, as we speak. And indeed you are absolutely right that it is likely that some people don't return if they have to wait too long. No, unfortunately I do not have the solutions you need, my suggestion was just dropped here because it is a very annoying thing to experience. Some other forums indeed require approval, and that indeed is not the way to do this and not the way we should go with this great medium. BTW; I too believe that a great forum like this should be public and offer easy and quick access.

I just applied a new mod that should help. The biggest problem that we have is that phpBB, like all other forum programming that I have researched has some limitations and some glitches. It's open source so users are constantly producing new modifications to add features and correct problems, but not all of those work either. Unfortunately I am not a computer programmer and don't have anyone working for me who is, but we are constantly learning and hopefully will have a handle on this problem very soon.

Again, I apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

So the real clever (nasty) ones probably dump their spam right into the phpBB main board, where it is distributed over all the other forums that are hosted there.
That indeed is a very effective way of advertizing! Thank you for all the effort you guys are putting in!

The last mod I made seems to be working so far. Let me know if you notice any more spam as I'm sure they will continue to try to find ways to get past our safeguards.

how often does spam make it through

Not a single one that I am aware of since we made the modification on May 12th. Prior to that it was anywhere from one a week to a couple of dozen per day. It's a never ending game and just when we think we have a handle on it someone finds a way to get through.