Why is every other post on the forums a random bot, now? Can't we do anything to stop them? We were botless for so long. Who the hell is going to post on a forum where the only replies they're going to get are from bots?

So, yeah. How do we fix this? Can we just reboot the entire forum or something? This place is so stale, anyway. Nobody posts here anymore at all! DX

Sadly this has been a problem for while now. :\ We have been trying to deal with it but there's not much else I know we can do, unless Gand has some surprises up his sleeve.

I added a question and answer challenge to the registration process so hopefully that will cut down on bot registration. The spam filter is working well; you guys are only seeing about 1% of the spam posts; the rest are moderated.

Resetting the forums won't really change anything, but we would lose old threads and attachments.

Do what I do: report the spam with something funny for the reason so that the staff can get a good laugh and want to come back to see what you post next.

It's just that I see a million forums out there with *no* spam posts at all. Is it that the software running their forum is different, or do they actually just have two hundred mods working around the clock to clean up the mess constantly?
It's just so unappealing seeing ad-bots everywhere. I don't think it's helping this forum's attendance at all. I like Ichigo's, so I'd rather not see it fade into obscurity. DX
Thanks to Gand and the mods for doing what they're doing, though.

Traffic feels like it's slowed down a lot over the last year. There shouldn't be only one post a week in the music section. Blah.
Not that I know what to do about it. My suggestion would be to totally delete all the forums besides the music related ones, and maybe add a few music subsections. It's a little drastic, but nobody uses any of the extra sections anymore, anyway...

And change the forum's default color or something, to make things fresh around here again. Take on a few new moderators (in addition to the nice mods we have now!) who know what the hell they're talking about in terms of music, and have them give people advice and encourage some learning around here.

My two cents. Good luck to Ichigo's!

It's kinda weird, the site is busier than ever, but nobody visits the forums. I don't think the bots have anything to do with it but they are annoying. I've been a sysadmin for a forum with over 70million posts, and they get a TON of spam. Spam filters moderate most of it, but they have an army of moderators that check for and remove spam when it appears. I'm still trying to find ways around it... Stay tuned

Speaking of which, just deleted a bot that through on this very thread. -_-

Gand is right though, most of it is held back by moderation. I must have spent an hour the other night just clicking "delete" on spam posts.

That is quite curious though, I thought the site was slowing down along with the forums; not going in the other direction. Of course its good news, just sad to see the forums so inactive (although can't really speak having not posted for quite a while).

Right now all registrations are being moderated, which is not sustainable, but we'll see how it goes.

The problem is that they aren't bots, they are humans mostly from Asia and South America that are (presumably) paid to sign up for forums and post things. So bot-spam prevention doesn't work.

Maybe we should keep them around a bit longer, and see if we can interest them in music, then. They're much more active than our average members at least, hahah. X'D

Ok I think I implemented some stuff that will prevent human/bot registrations... A question/answer challenge. I don't think the human bots can read english. Existing accounts might still be able to post but the moderation queue should catch most. Moderators, please delete any moderated posts as spam :)

I re enabled normal registration

Nice. That should slow them down, at least. :3
Good job, Gand! \o/

But I was having such fun reporting posts...

Is there a way to appeal an ban if you are mistakenly banned?
My friend's account was banned on this website for being an adbot for no apparent reason.

What is his username? I can unban him

HollowSunsets
Thanks :)