Hailwidis had some great recommendations. Here’s a list of some more options:
I know it’s been said a billion times and you’re probably tired of hearing it, but I’ve never seen a forum that is spammed as often as this one. If other forums out there are taking preventive measures to lessen the spam, there’s hope for this one too! I think it just takes a little research and effort. CAPTCHA’s are an easy solution to start off…I’d think.
:rolleyes: 
This is getting really annoying. Come on guys, there must be something more you can do. Personally I don’t even bother posting anymore when I see the whole thing is full of spam AGAIN.
Mmm yes, the question being asked is really not: Why isn’t spam deleted faster?
It’s plain to everyone that if you have a huge amount of spam being posted, it will take a lot of time and effort to delete it all and it will be basically impossible to stay on top of the situation without a huge team of moderators. We know this.
The question being asked is: Why aren’t these well-known, simple and free methods (cf. many other posts giving specific suggestions that we’ve seen used elsewhere to good effect) used to stop spam being posted in the first place?
Would either one of the site owners mind answering this second question? I know you mentioned filters so I presume a certain amount of spam is being stopped before it is posted, but could you please address the matter of why more isn’t being done on this front? If there’s a reason let us know! I don’t think anybody wants an answer to the first question so with all due respect could you not simply answer that one again. I mean obviously it’s your site, it’s free to use, and you don’t have to do anything, but I’m not sure why you wouldn’t want your site to be spammed less.
To be honest, it kind of feels like if we were writing to the city council to say, “Hey, there’s a lot of rubbish on the ground at the park, why aren’t there any bins there?” and then got the response, “We send someone to clean up the rubbish as often as we can”.
I have already messaged ren but if a moderator is needed for the AWST time zone (8 hours ahead of UTC) I’m happy to do it.
I don’t post as much anymore because I normally just click new posts and lately it has been mostly spam.
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there.
[name_m]How[/name_m] would adding more mods help stop spamming? All that does is clean up the mess that you’ve neglected to fix. As jackal said, it’s like calling your city council about rubbish in the park and just getting told “we’re cleaning it as often as we can”. Similar happened to me during school, if I was bullied, the response was “we’ll have a talk to them” but no one ever implemented an actual solution. [name_m]How[/name_m] do you expect to stop a problem if you don’t prevent it from continuing? You can continue to delete and ban spammers, but is that going to stop them from posting? Doesn’t seem that way!
Many others have suggested brilliant ideas, and really, it’s becoming annoying that they’re being ignored. I feel as though, if there is not a solution soon, or the only solution that you are willing to use is a paywall (which sounds a little…odd, really, but oh well), then Nameberry will likely lose quite a few fed up, annoyed members, or members who simply can’t afford to pay for a naming site. Making us pay to use the site when some of us have been members for 5+ years is a bit ridiculous.
@lawsonhaley, I’m not sure what makes you say the spam is being ignored, as I check in with this forum frequently and I and the moderators all clean up the spam throughout every day.
I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but our engineer has put up a new filter that seems to be catching the worst recent offenders. This is a huge relief. We’d all like to spend our time doing more useful things.
And just to clarify some issues that have come up here, the spammers we’ve been getting are not robots or auto-spam but people who work hard to outwit the system, including typing in the capcha codes. In order to post in the forums, you do have to create an account and respond to an email link – which these people do faster than we can keep up with them. It does help to delete the spam and ban them asap as it forces them to go through their whole process again and sometimes they get discouraged and go elsewhere, but it is a huge time and effort suck on our end.
[name_m]Just[/name_m] FYI, spambots can get past e-mail verification. All it takes is a few more lines of code.
And they’re back!
They’re back (again)!
More spam 
Some in the baby names forum.
The spam is back again!
Hey everybody, The spammers are tireless. I and the moderators work round the clock to find and delete the spam. Why don’t some of you volunteer to moderate and delete? Obviously, we could use the help.
And FYI, they’re not bots but humans who can easily get around the coding system. We update our filter every day but they just use new words to get around that too.
[name_f]Pam[/name_f] - I’d be happy to moderate spam if you give me the permissions to do so.
Thank you! I’m going to introduce you to [name_f]Sarah[/name_f], who is the acting head mod, to get you set up as a moderator. Thanks.
[name_m]Hi[/name_m] @Namefan – I PM’d you and [name_f]Sarah[/name_f] together but I also tried to email you both and I guess the email you signed up with is now defunct. Can you please send me your email at pam@nameberry.com? I also upgraded you to moderator, which should start working after you log out and log back in. But I wanted you to connect with [name_f]Sarah[/name_f] for further instruction on using the moderation tools. Thanks again!