Tips on fighting spam on communities

One of my big admin jobs of late has been simply removing forum spam.

Although my larger communities usually have protection, I’ve been developing a whole load of newer forums recently that have tried to be friendly to new users - and with that, unfortunately, forum spam.

I’ve posted a fairly intensive list of tips on how to fight forum spam - and though it’s disappointing that few vbulletin admins seem to digg it, at least stymiee at SitePoint thought a condensed version with references I posted up on the Community Building section was worth making sticky.

Overall, forum spamming is becoming an increasing problem I have to deal with…

…but, I don’t apply all of my own recommendations myself.

It’s worth pointing out that forum stats can be very influential not simply for attracting new users, but also for advertising purposes.

So I never try to block the bots that sign up - simply invalidate their attempts at SE-friendly links - not least using vbulletin conditionals.

This is especially the case where one of my bigger forums is in direct competition with another.

Although the rate of growth in all ways is stronger, the last thing I want is for advertisers to be more attracted to a forum with a larger member base than one with a smaller one simply from blocking the bots.

After all, advertisers work with raw figures, not abstract concepts such as memberlist spamming.

So I allow the memberlist spammers to continue to build up my stats.

This isn’t to mislead advertisers - actually the opposite.

If your competition is allowing their member stats to be inflated artificially, then at least by not putting a block on your own, you can allow the forums to be compared relatively.

Then potential advertisers can focus more on issues such as relative activity, rather than focus on bean-counting with essentially meanginless figures such as memberlists.