QUOTE(+ Kinjo - @ Aug 14 2013, 03:23 PM)
We have been plagued with spambot problems for quite a long time now and default (older)IPB /recaptcha has been failing to stop spambots from registering with the forum.
This forces us to manually approve and screen all registration and it's a very boring work to do!
Upgrading the forum is out of question for now since forum upgrades cost hundreds of dollars and forum's theme also needs re-skinning which don't come cheap.
I'm currently hiring a developer in India who currently trying to find a low cost solution to this. Let's hope anything good come out from this one.
If you have any ideas/comments to combat our spambot problem please post them here!
Make it a multi-step vetting.
Have completed profiles as a requirement before they can post and first three post need mod approval before they are seen generally. Perhaps even one of those things that calculates word word frequency to auto-junk any post made that has some word more than 25% of the post's content. That will keep the spam out of sight and less work needs to go into vetting, because it catches them when they spam rather than trying to remove them before.
Other less probable ideas:
Have them upload a picture with a Sacred Magick Forums.
Aside from that hold an initiation (IMG:
style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Fill out a profile, send an email telling why you want to be a member. Send an email back asking some question on the occult that a Google search will turn up. That sounds like too much effort for a spammer to do in order to get just one account.