Champlain Islander

Yes it does take a lot of time to deal with spam on a daily basis. A year ago when I was a moderator the active spam was actually much worse. As alleyouper stated spam was landing in the whitetail section each night and often was responsible for several threads being started. You sign on click to whitetail and there would be new threads all at the top of the page. I would get my coffee and sit there and delete the threads and ban the users one at a time or in the case when it was a bot putting the same or similar threads in multiple forums I used some of the software tools to delete all the posts of that user then ban him or it in the case of a bot. I was spending more and more time each day eliminating them and finally decided that I needed to move on that it was taking far too much of my time. There were some good software fixes that over the course of last year appeared to help. Whatever they were did stop the many of the bogus threads from appearing in the site and I believe kept new members from having a sig line but I have noticed that since the software upgrade the spam appears at least to me to be creeping back in. As Paul said sometimes you do have to go looking for the spam and was pretty good at uncovering and removing them and to some extent still look around a bit even though it is no longer my job. My opinion is spam is something that if it stays at a certain level and is properly dealt with the general membership rarely notice it. Other sites I go to are similar to this one and it is rare to see spam even when looking with "trained eyes". I think spam is like a cancer and when allowed to remain attracts others and after a while the membership does notice and will start to react by posting about it. My advice is to eliminate sig lines for new members through software if possible and develop a system and guidelines for the mods to work together to catch the spammers who slip through. When something is reported there should be a system in place to ensure it is viewed and dealt with by either mods or admin. Nothing could be worse that to have a member take the time to point out a problem and have nobody get back to them or correct the issue. Good luck to all and I hope the site gets active again with spam all but eliminated.

Edit: I'll add this and then go fishing...one suggestion I will make is to develop a way for the mods to access the latest members who have signed up. To eliminate a spammer they have to be seen by a mod and right now only the last new member is visible at the bottom of the screen as well as current members still on line. If a spammer signs up at 2 am and another signs up at 3 am by the time any mod comes on line the first will be gone from view and possibly many others since they were replaced at the bottom newest member slot. Once they sign generally they access their profile a few times then sign off and come right back and sign on another membership and so on. If the mods had a tool to see any member who signed up in the last 24 hours they could quickly go through them and sift the spammers out. Right now if anyone clicks on the membership lists thousands of pages come up and they are listed 0 posts first but in alphabetical order. If you click posts it changes the filter and shows the top posters by count. If there was something that sorted by time of membership starting with the newest it would be easier for a mod to look at them and deal with spammers. Good luck