Outwit the SPAM bots!

[Diablo0]

Spambots can be pretty smart, but they're also pretty stupid. When the new forum went live I turned on reCapcha to stop spam, but some are still sneaking through.

I'd like to change the spam countermeasures on the site to a Q&A method instead. I can load in however many questions I'd like, but I need questions and I'd like to enlist the community in thinking of those questions and answers.

So give me some Questions and Answers that every new user signing up for the forum should have to answer. They should be answerable by humans, but not by a computer.

Example:

Question: Enter a year the second generation Neon was manufactured:
Answers: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 00, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05

[Diablo0]

Bump

[JeremyJ]

Enter a year the SRT-4 Neon was produced.

A: 2003, 2004, 2005

What brand(s) was the Neon sold under?

A: Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth

How many doors did the second Gen Neon have?

A: 4, four

How many balls does Chuck Norris have?

A: More than you, all of them

[Diablo0]

Well done lol

[occasional demons]

How many spark plugs are there in 5 neon engines?

People in export countries may not know about Plymouth and Dodge, since about everything is/was Chrysler.

Heck, even knowing how many spark plugs a neon engine has might be beyond some people's knowledge... but it wouldn't necessarily make them a bad candidate for a member.

[Midnight_Rider]

What year was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band released?

[INVUJerry]

I think something simple with multiple answers available would be okay. Like “what year is your neon?” Where 95-05 or 1995-2005 is all correct.

[occasional demons]

Exactly, it needs to be something a machine can't easily figure out, but a person with limited automotive vocabulary/knowledge can figure out.

It won't keep determined human spammers out, but you don't want to discourage those of us that want to learn, but have little skills. We all started somewhere, and may not have had anyone to lend a hand.

[Midnight_Rider]

You're right. My sample question wouldn't work.

[Diablo0]

Q&A has been enabled for new user registrations - If a SpamBot registered prior to this, they'll still be able to post. Banning or Deleting their username will resolve this problem.

[Midnight_Rider]

Banning and deleting as fast as I can. Whew!

[occasional demons]

Yeah, I don't think all these Russian man gravy swallowers were registered before this. Especially since new users from after 2015 got wiped too.

And why can't we delete a whole thread, that one spammer ( Daniilmum for example) has created? I started to at work the other day, had to do it post by fricken post, but couldn't dedicate that much time on the clock, so unfortunately I could not finish.

There is no option to list all the posts of one user, and check or uncheck all of them. That would make cleaning things up immensely simpler/less time consuming. I know it is a safeguard to keep from wiping a legit user's entire post history, but you could still do it if you were determined enough, and had zero morals.

[Midnight_Rider]

Yes to being able to delete the whole thread of non-legitimate users! I've spent several hours, deleting one post at a time. As much as I really care about the health of this site, it can be very time consuming trying to mop up the messes that these #$%^& spammers create.

[occasional demons]

Figured it out PM'ed