Spammers ARE scripts. vBulletin is very good at filtering the spam, 100x better than phpbb. It could save you some time at the very least, even if you continue to disallow linking.

I couldn't care less, but maybe you'd like to save some time.

Between captcha and activation emails there has to be some human interaction. Since I'm not an admin I cant change the forum settings so any enforcement is best applied across the board. I catch the majority of spammers during the new member moderation period or when they register their account.

I'm not saying that onelove is a spammer, but if I allow one member to link ABC then others will also want to link XYZ. Then I'll have to deal with "but you let LMNOP link ABC, why can't I link what I get paid to spam? That's not fair!"

We used to allow linking and that got abused so I changed it to "no links to sites that sell anything grow related" and that didn't stop them either. Seriously, if I had better tools to deal with the spammers I'd allow linking but it's easier to stop it all, for now, than to police each link.

As I've said, nickgreen can override my decisions if he wants, I wouldn't take it personally if somebody complains and he tells me to do something differently. It's just what I've been doing to stop spammers and make the forums a little nicer for everyone. Unless you want to see spam ads for baby car seats and viagra?

SisterMaryElephant wrote: Unless you want to see spam ads for baby car seats and viagra?

With things like adblocks, I haven't seen an ad since 2007.

Again, I'm not the admin, I'm just a moderator. I can't change forum settings, I can't install modules/plugins, or different forum SW. My hands are tied...

SisterMaryElephant wrote:Again, I'm not the admin, I'm just a moderator. I can't change forum settings, I can't install modules/plugins, or different forum SW. My hands are tied...

I was making a suggestion that could enhance your experience here by lessening the moderating load. Switching to vBulletin will change nothing for the end user. It would just make the board more secured and easier for you to administer.

It wasn't a complaint.

Also, sorry OP for hijacking your thread!

You'd have to make that suggestion to the owner or admin, I can't switch the sw, only the server admin could. I don't have root access, I don't have forum admin access.

Don't worry, I'll split most of this off to the general section. THAT I can do.