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Would using SMF stop Forum Spam?

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Arantor:
And you could then be done for infringing a trademark. Isn't that fun!

ApplianceJunk:
:)

kathiemt:
All forums experience spam problems to some extent.  Moderation is the only real answer. You can put in anti-spam measures and they help to a degree, but ultimately you still need to either moderate who joins, or the posts. If you have a large forum then you need to have others helping you to moderate.  Given that, I love how SMF operates and it's fairly easy to set up. There are always people here who are willing to point you in the right direction and I was able to set up a new forum quite quickly and easily a couple of months ago.

MovedGoalPosts:
You will never stop a determined human from posting their junk to a forum.  That is where the final defence of moderation comes in.  But ideally you need to block as much automated stuff as possible, without deterring genuine site visitors.

Most current forum software has default options which will deter the bots.  Don't rely on catchpa systems.  They are often cracked.  Indeed on my SMF I've now turned them off.  SMF's Question and Answer verification works well, the only problem being if you have multiple language visitors there aren't multi language questions and answer options.  I'd suggest though you need a number of these Q & A, requiring at least 2 questions to be asked on a random selection.

But it's the add ons and modifications that can really do the stuff to block the spammers before they even get to your forum.  Amongst the most powerful of these is Bad Behaviour.  This is a third party security system.  The mod has been ported to work with SMF, available from the customize lists above.  I believe there will be versions of this for many other forum types too.

yeehi:

--- Quote from: movedgoalposts on July 09, 2012, 11:34:12 AM ---Amongst the most powerful of these is Bad Behaviour.  This is a third party security system.  The mod has been ported to work with SMF, available from the customize lists above. 

--- End quote ---

Thanks for this,movedgoalposts. I wonder how Bad Behaviour compares with Mollom, another software as a service anti-spam solution. (The client is open source, and you can use the service for free up to a limited number of submissions a month.)

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