Im not sure who these people are, because they arent posting (or they are blocked by the mods). Seems that alot of people joining the forums, such as the latest one, anabolic, have unnatural obsessions with bizzare things. For example (from userpage) :

Website: http://www.diet-pills-24h.com/products/251.html
Occupation: citrate tamoxifen
Interests: nolvadex prescriptions

A bot? Most likely. Amusing? Very yes.

maybe the same thing should be done as here: http://www.map-center.com/forums/index.php, where a space is left in the register box where bots fill in normally, and if it is filled in the email will be banned. Good idea in my opinion.

Yeah, those are spammers. I don't actually know if it's people getting paid to sign up on different forums or if there is a system doing that, but either way they all should die IMO.

They're bots. If email verification is enabled (I think it is) then they will register but not activate it.

I have some mods for blocking them outright (as I have said before) and I would be more than willing to share them with alientrap (as I said before).

What mods?
I am starting another gaming website called 3delement:
http://www.3delement.com
And the spammers are filling up the forums, and the tutorial submissions

This is a test bed I have with two mods enabled:
http://www.rofltech.co.uk/phpBB2/index.php

1. Registrations don't allow certain fields (www, icq, occupation) that a new user probably shouldn't be adding and that are typically used by bots. If a field entry is detected then registration dies.
2. Any post that takes less than 5 seconds or does not come from a single user (cryptographic signing of session is used) will go to a preview rather than submit.

I can email them to you if you would like.

The first thing I suggest though is enabling email verification checking. The spam bots register but most won't be able to post.

Vermeulen wrote:What mods?
I am starting another gaming website called 3delement:
http://www.3delement.com

"Not Just Rappers and Athletes: Minorities in Videogames"

Wow..how very P.C.

Interesting site. The tutorial topics are all interesting (except for the one above), but they all seem to point to GamaSutra.com and it requires an account to view the pages.

We used to get about 10-15 spam registrations a week, until I made modifications to the registration process. Pretty much all spam accounts being registered at the moment (which is still quite rare) are actually manual registrations which there is pretty much no way of truely blocking, and I don't feel it necessary or wise to offer board features and then decline users registration for attempting to use them.

Every month or so, I go and I delete all accounts which are clearly spam accounts, and lately, I've only had to delete 2 or 3 at a time, though I know some of the other mods on the board are doing their part as well.

I deal with them my own way I ban their nicks and delete their accounts. And soon enough there will be no more nicks that can actually register on our forums So if you want a nick you would have to contact an admin for it lool ... xD

But the good thing is, now we only get like 1-3 fucksos a week. Sometimes not a single one for one whole week