Thanks JonB! 

I'm more amused by the spam than bothered by it. What's bothered me is that spam should not be tolerated in YaBB's own support forum. There's no excuse for it, especially since it's relatively easy to stop it cold.

As for sending you private spam reports, you and the rest of the YaBB leadership will either do something about it on your own, or you won't.

If it's any consolation, however, I've certainly made my point about spam posts being unacceptable here in this forum, so I'll now refrain from pointing out the obvious.

JonB wrote on Apr 18^th, 2012 at 8:06pm:

Jon, what you are actually seeing are sophisticated spam-bots that have fooled you into thinking they are human. That's how good they've become.

My suggestion is to get Corey to at least try installing one of the anti-spam mods; maybe the one with the fruits; whatever it's called.

Edited:

From what others are saying about it, that mod stops spam-bots cold. I don't have the knowledge to install it, but you or Corey would certainly know how to install it. It certainly looks pretty.  

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You can also try implementing the anti-spam hack that ggn wrote for YaBB. Even I was able to make the necessary edits to make it work. To date, hundreds of thousands of spam-bots have tried to register without success. It's simply stopped them cold!

As for hu-bots, I can say with educated assurance that you will find very few of them trying to register if any at all. In the many hundreds of thousands of spam-bot registrations that have failed because of ggn's anti-spam hack, only a handful have actually been hu-bots. Those have been stopped easily enough with admin approval although I understand you're still against that.

Keep in mind that any actual hu-bot should be able to easily figure out the anti-spam captcha hack. Carsten's Spamfruits, too, come to think of it. But again, what you're actually seeing are sophisticated spam-bots that have convinced you they are human.

Until you actually try to use an anti-spam mod that's been written for YaBB, arguing against its use because you think it won't work is a moot point. You're already agreeing with the spammers that they can't be stopped, but of course we who have chosen to fight them know that they can be stopped.

Of course it won't work if you don't try it.  

Bottom line: There are YaBB forums who have successfully stopped spam registrations. This forum hasn't because there's a lack of will to stop it.

At least try; pretty please?  

lydia lie wrote on Apr 18^th, 2012 at 6:53am:

No revenge here. You are more than welcomed. 

It still amuses me how this forum continues to do virtually nothing to stop spammers. Rather than stop the spam, which could easily be stopped if there was the will to stop it, unacceptable excuses are made that effectively allows it.

At least some of the spam has been able to stick around even when other spam has been swatted away. That makes the unacceptable just downright embarrassing.

Spam in YaBB's own support forum? Live with it! We don't care! 

I never allow posts to be edited after posting, I think it encourages the guys to spell and think about what they are going to post if they know they cant edit it later.
A few years ago three idiots thought they could take over our forum because it looked quiete at the time, (How they thought they would get past me as the Administrator is still a mystery)

After picking a fight with yours truly threats and abuse reined down for almost a week.
back then we only had the basic YABB package that could not stop the abuse or bogus registrations made by the three offenders.

Eventually The police were brought in to quell the threats of bodilly harm. had the the culprits deleted or altered their posts no evidence would have been available for the police to use as evidence, so I advocate not being able to change a post for that very good reason.

I wasn't expecting that before I clicked the link. For some reason I expecting all the comment spam to be publicly viewable still - which would have been pointless.

But what you've done is pretty useful and worthwhile actually.

This forum may be of intrest to some of you who are overwhelmed by spam?

It is Our old Trail riding forum, when we moved servers the forum was left open as a "spam Trap" by the old administrator.
In just a few weeks over 550 spammers registered for the forum! these would have been bogus accounts which I would usually have to manually delete on a daily basis.

The administrator has now published the list of spammers which is available for all to see, and may be of help to others in blocking some of their spam.

I just hope the spam bots collect the information and start spamming each other