Bots are out of control, what are you doing about it?

[MoanaLisa]

Minimum amount of posts needed before you can create a thread yourself. Starting at 100 or so. Problem solved.

Thanks for suggesting that bots start off in the middle of existing threads where they would be more difficult to detect instead of with new threads which are easy to see.

Problem solved and replaced with a much worse problem.

[MechaCThun]

Thanks for suggesting that bots start off in the middle of existing threads where they would be more difficult to detect instead of with new threads which are easy to see.

Problem solved and replaced with a much worse problem.

No need to be snarky, moderator.

[MechaCThun]

This topic has been covered many times.

Cool.

And it's going to be covered many more times guaranteed.

[Elysia]

Going to just copy/paste the responses we've given in the past to this issue, but pre-emptive TL;DR: Yes, we get it's annoying. It's annoying for us, too. However, the suggestions we usually receive to combat these issues will harm more than they will help.

This has been addressed many, many, many, many times in this forum.

If they can't make new thread, they spam in existing things which makes it much harder to find and address their posts. When they make new threads, we can find and delete them much faster because they are much easier to spot.

We already use third party spam service, manual moderation queue for many posts, and restrictions on low post count users, as much as we can without negatively impacting real users. Since most of our spammers are real people and not bots, they know how to circumvent a lot of the measures that are put in place and are often one step ahead. Even still, for every thread you see on the forum, the filter catches many, many more. It does a good job for the volume we get; you just only see what doesn't get caught.

Having waves of stupid spam threads is extremely obnoxious and we don't like it either, but it's better than the alternative where there is spam mixed in with real posts in every thread that sit for much longer.

Additionally, we have tons of accounts that register to use our guild recruitment forums, often exclusively posting there. We also have users register to ask class related questions or raid troubleshooting help. This would have the negative repercussion of turning those users away.