Too much SPAM

[Bikeracer2020]

Of all the various forums I read it seems that this one is targeted with more daily spam than I see anywhere else.
I keep reporting it and it does usually get removed thanks to the moderators but I've got fed up with doing it, it's just seems pointless bothering anymore.

[curious aardvark]

to be fair reporting spam is - for me anyway - pointless.

My first 10-30 minutes here every visit, is going through the sections and removing everything I can find.

So I don't take any notice of the reports, it's easier to do it wholesale than a thread every now and then.

And yes it is bad.

My theory is that more posts mean more advert revenue, regardless of the nature of those posts.
The foum owners say that's not the case. And we generally agree to disagree.

The problem is that the bigger a site or forum gets, the more spam bots are aware and their sparkly little algorithms work out that more popular forums are better places to plant their little virtual eggs.

So as the biggest 3d printer forum on the web (as far as I know) we attract the largest number of spambots.

There is only one way to stop forum spam completely and that is to put a human in the sign up loop.
Other than that, you really can not stop it.

[Bikeracer2020]

Thanks for explaining that

[Martin_au]

I had a discussion with the administrators a while back.

Digging around a bit, the main problem with this forum is that the authentication systems (Captchas, that sort of thing) are well out of date and have been worked around, so there's very little preventing automated bots joining up and running amuck.

There are many other larger 3D printer forums without the spam. Even the Thingiverse forums are relatively spam free. Seems like most 3D printing discussions are on Facebook though, rather than dedicated forums.