Didn’t see any “forum support” section, so I’m posting this in hopes some admin notices.
I’ve seen quite few post messages lately (fortunately quickly deleted). But I also know solution that would relieve mods from “deleting duty” a bit.
Since most spambots post posts full of links, it’d be possible to make new users not being able to post links unless they’re active members for specified time or have specified post count (may also take Answers posts into account since bots don’t target Answers AFAIK). This would remove at least some of these spambots.
Another possible solution is to require solving captcha for few first posts, this also seem to mitigate at least dumber spambots.
I know what I’m saying. I’m moderator on few forums and usually those measures of removing spambots work and it doesn’t require moderators to remove those posts and they can take on more important duties like dealing with flamewars or making games (in case of Unity) :).
If only people would just let the admins do the administration stuff, and stop bringing up new threads to “combat spam.” I know that every tech-minded forum user thinks they have a new tech solution to the problem, but so do the tech-minded forum administrators. Most proposed solutions (block arabic, block urls, block countries, install captcha, promote moderators, allow users to blacklist, etc.) have serious downsides that make forums less inviting or less functional or less manageable for all the non-spamming users.
What are downsides of blocking links and putting until user is confirmed to be a real person and not spammer? Also I agree that blocking arabic (or other national letters, e.g. cyrillic) and countries is a silly idea.