We've been getting a marked increase in spam activity recently and from what I read it seems that they've figured out a way for their bots to get around the CAPTCHA image verification system we use at registration. As a result I've modified that system to guarantee that human involvement must now occur during registration so with luck that will help reduce the garbage considerably.
As an adjunct to the above measures, I've made some changes to posting moderation rules which will apply to the first 5 posts from new members (the number of posts that spammers usually hit us with before we ban them). Effectively immediately, if you have less than 5 posts and you notice that your new thread or reply is not posted right away, it's probably because you used certain keywords which triggered the spam filter - or that you used too many links to other sites in your message. In either case you will receive an error message after submitting your post and it will be placed in our moderation queue.
If you have any issues with this feature, just PM a moderator or myself. Please note - if your message does get flagged as spam, it will need to be approved before it can be seen. As this could take a couple of hours, please don't be tempted to post your thread several more times since that will make everybody very cross.
Thank you for your patience (if you are affected).
Mike
