Hmm... I'm not aware of any serious spam issues in this forum
Granted, there are some spammers here from time to time, but usually it's not a big issue at all. I'd say there are only up to 1 or 2 spam posts in the forum per month on average, if any.
You can never get fully rid of spammers. If a spam post shows up, it usually gets removed in a timely manner either by Minotorious or me.
There seems to be a few more spammers who just abuse the "About me" section to leave some spam links there (without posting anything on the forums). Do you maybe refer to this type of spammers?
I don't think many people check out their profiles to find the links (so I guess this is rather a minor issue), however, if you do run into any of these users, it's definitely helpful to report them (so we can ban them accordingly) ![]()
* Weed out "new users" having no posts within months
Well, there are definitely legit users who didn't post anything at all. There is only a single account which is used for both the homepage and the forums, and it is also needed to purchase the standalone version of the game.
* Add a moderation queue for new users (you're not really overrun here, eh? :))
We do that temporarily in case there is a large wave of spammers at the same time. Something like that happened back in 2016, for example - we got a bunch of negative reviews and also experienced a lot of spammers in the forum at the same time (what a coincidence!). We've maintained a moderation queue for new users for a few weeks, until the spammers lost interest.
However, due to the fact that people need an account to purchase the standalone version of the game, this isn't a suitable solution anymore...
* Add a game purchase verification (e.g. game key to "link" with a purchase)
While an account is required in order to purchase the standalone version, there is no need to purchase the game to create posts in the forums. Apart from that, it's difficult to verify Steam purchase, for example (but it's totally fine if a Steam user prefers to use this forum).
* Make use of abusive IP databases (like iplists from e.g. Firehol)
I'm not sure if this is a good idea. There is always a margin of error and a chance of false-positives, and we don't want to block innocent users for no reason.
I guess most users have a rotating IP address anyway.
* Make use of spammer databases (like StopForumSpam) during the registration
We're already using StopForumSpam, and there are also a few other measures to keep spam bots away from the forums
Actually I don't believe we have that many actual spam bots, it looks like most spam accounts were created by humans.



