New idea to fight spammers

How about making new members unable to create threads in any of the forums? Sure, they can reply, and vote, but no new threads until they reach something like 25 or 30 posts; that way, they are very likely not spam bots. Any upheld flagging of their posts resets their 'purgatory count'.

Something has to be done, the Mobile forum is basically moderation-free and its getting pretty bad out there.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. There is no spam in the Mobile forum and we have lots of things in place to prevent / kill spam. Sometimes spammers get though for a short period of time but they get booted and all their spam nuked within a day.

@gamer_durandal: not so sure how would you say the Mobile section is the only one that's spam-infested,even in the most popular sections are no doubt any worse..you should've been there blowing a big-ass whistle to a huge 4-9 hours spam fest that happened 2 days ago.

He's probably referring to this...

It's not just mobile forums. This site is definitely plagued with spam. The first SIX pages of the Games Discussion forum is filled with this crap.

currently the first SIX (yes six) pages of the games discussion forum are made up entirely of spam topics. so if there's around 30 topics per page that's around 180 spam topics. suggests to me that handling spam needs a review

I'm getting sick of this sh*t. I'm on game discussion forum and right now I'm on Page 4 and haven't fount a single thread apart from the ones from spammers.

kinda wish everyone here(SPAMMERS ARE NOT WELCOME) is a moderator(including me),so things like these won't happen

we expect heavy spam influx during E3..keep an eye out,shoot on sight!

SPAMMERS ARE TO BE LETHALLY EXECUTED TO DEATH,JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST THEM! GO GS,GO!

That's embarrassing. All that spam is getting purged right now.

@edgework: well,the GD now jumped ship,which means all the non sticky threads are on the 7th page...is the spam purge still in process?

I am not meaning to sound like I am throwing rocks. The mods have a hard job, but I am just suggesting something that might stem the tide of it a little. Another forum I participate in, for model trains, has this rule. Every post is moderated until you reach 15 or 20 (I think its a random threshold) and you can only reply to other people's posts - can't create threads and you can't use the buy/sell section until you become a full-fledged member. It really cuts down on the riff-raff.

@edgework: What happened to GD? can't find any threads.

@Gamerno6666: all existing past threads currently sit on the 7th page...might as well bump one of them to help the thread back to the front page

@gamer_durandal: @Smashbrossive50: @Gamerno6666:

We're aware of the issues and it's a balancing act. We want to block spam but we don't want to discourage new users, either. As mods, we see -all- the same and even if we blocked new thread creation the spammers would just flood existing threads with spam replies (we remove those all the time).

Regarding the page count, the deleted threads appear to throw off the per page count so please page through until you find the real threads. They are all there, but they may not show up on the first (or even fifth) page until the dust settles from the recent cleanup.

-Byshop

like I said prior...the real threads are all holed up to the 7th page shortly after the massive spam purge.

The point was it will resolve itself but thanks for letting us know.

-Byshop