For spam

[HeadInAnotherGalaxy]

Would it be possible (until we do something to end this stupid spam) to create a decoy board for the spammers that normal members that cannae delete topics/posts/etc. [kenning what twas created for] can just ignore while the spammers [not realizing this] will post their spam there, where the members that do have the ability can just [when they see that something has been posted there and have deemed it as spam or something like that] delete that topic and the spammer who posted it?

[Taggerung_of_Redwall]

The problem comes with the lack of being able to create a decoy board that could actually attract spammers. For the most part, all topics spambots post go the Off-Topic Discussion, that being the original board. A good deal does end up somewhere else though. And the only way (that I'm aware of) to allow members to get those abilities would be to make a very long list of moderators for that board.

But more to point on ending spam and more practically (I don't truly think a decoy board is practical, no offense), the staff is working on at least a couple more spam-reduction agents, in addition to e-mail activation and captcha.
Spam is being given thought, but SMF in general attracts a good deal of it to my understanding.

[James Gryphon]

Most of the webboards I've seen allow the administrator to require that s/he authenticate new members -- so a clearly spam-oriented member could be rejected by the administration staff in advance.

The only problem with this is that it prevents someone from just signing up and posting, and might be more trouble than it's worth in some cases.

Any anti-spam system you have, though, short of just piling on a ton of admins and mods and keeping someone on at all hours of the day, is going to involve some compromise and trouble for the users.

[The Lady Shael]

The spam has been reduced exponentially already, we were getting about 20+ (rather obscene) posts a day before the current measures were put in place. Of course no spam would be great.

There is a method of dealing with spam where new members are forced to post a topic on an Introduction board before they can post anywhere else. Spam would be isolated to this board only and when real members post, staff members can assign them permissions to post on the rest of the board. This is similar to what James Gryphon mentioned about administrators being required to authenticate new members. I don't like this method because members have to wait around before they can participate, and because it's a "duct-tape fix"...you're fixing the problem after it's happened instead of preventing it. To fix this in the long term, we need a preventative measure (stop spam accounts from signing up at all).

I have told Redwall Abbey the best way to deal with the spam is to upgrade our forum to SMF 2.0. This is an action that can only be done by a server admin. Redwall Abbey seems to have been busy of late, and we really don't know how much time he can dedicate to this issue (I'm sure he's a busy man).

[HeadInAnotherGalaxy]

Dinnae some forums have some feature that allows certain words to be starred (*) out?

[The Lady Shael]

We do have a word filter set up now, it catches most of the obscene words.

[Matthias720]

And we're all grateful for that.

[Coobreedan]

Good. No bad words for Dibbuns to learn!

[Tiria Wildlough]

I haven't seen any bad words.