Limit images/links

[MrLachyG]

I think the recent spam posts by that fuckwit Demonic-inessa speak for themselves. Definitely needs to be a limit.

Also, wake up mods and ban her already

[Tziva]

We already have restrictions in place. All new accounts / accounts with less than 15 posts have reduced permission on the site. For example, they cannot post links, images, or send PMs. Additionally, new user posts are largely pushed through an approval filter first, meaning those initial posts have to be manually reviewed before they unlock normal account permissions. We catch the grand majority of spambots this way.

But while this works pretty good on spammers, it is less useful on real people with malicious intent, since they are more capable of pretending to be normal users long enough to acquire regular permissions, and can jump through any other hoops we provide (like captcha, etc).

Unfortunately, there isn't really a lot extra we can do to target this niche situation that wouldn't also negatively impact new users more broadly. I get that this kind of thing is really annoying and disruptive, but it is also an infrequent occurrence. We have to navigate account restrictions/limited with both genuine new users and spambots in mind as well, and both of these make up a much larger portion of the user base than "random user with bad intentions and too much free time."

If anyone has any inventive ideas that haven't already been addressed a million times already in the context of spambot discussions, feel free to pass them along but keep in mind we can't do anything that makes handling spambots worse/slower (since we get a zillion of these all the time) or blocks actual new users -- such as those registering to use the recruitment forums -- from doing so, since these are both much more common scenarios.

Mods handled this situation when one became available who could.