Spam membership overwhelming board

[YinYang]

On Safari I frequently find the board way too slow and now often just give up waiting out of frustration.
I notice there are now well over a quarter of a million members which is complete nonsense as there is clearly an excessive number of spam membership that’s likely to blame for the poor functionality of this board…. Tramppyjama8 etc etc!!!!

Is there anything that can be done? At least to stop new spam membership so the existing ones can be gradually weeded out.

[GerardGartner]

Thanks for bringing this topic up, it's been on my mind for a long time. The numbers are clearly unrealistic in terms of how many people are actually interested in this stuff. At this point it may be a lost cause, but then again these ever-increasing numbers may eventually put strain on the server and increase the cost of running the site. (I've heard that there's an anonymous benefactor who pays for the site, but still.) It would be cool to see numbers on how many "real" members we have, but weeding through/deleting a quarter of a million profiles seems impossible, so we may be stuck with what we've got -- or, maybe it's possible to do some kind of non-destructive reset?

If we ever were to reset, or start over, I think adding some kind of minimal, easy "interview" question (or something similar) to the registration process might help -- like, "What are you hoping to get out of this forum?" Or maybe requiring a more filled-out profile as part of registration? Something spammers couldn't get through.

[BattlesandDeaths]

Spam membership has been plaguing the board since its creation.  I am currently working on deleting all profiles that haven't been active in 3 years or more.

As for the registration process, unfortunately, there aren't a lot of options available.  

[blackhole]

Spam membership has been plaguing the board since its creation.  I am currently working on deleting all profiles that haven't been active in 3 years or more.

As for the registration process, unfortunately, there aren't a lot of options available.  

As long as you're not conflating 'lurking' with 'inactivity' -- I'm a real person, I just don't engage...

[heydude61]

Not all Spam accounts are created by people.
'Bots' are often used to make fake accounts.
If there is 'prove you're a human' check in the registration process, that may help stop new spam accounts.
Thanks for all the hard work.

[GerardGartner]

Spam membership has been plaguing the board since its creation.  I am currently working on deleting all profiles that haven't been active in 3 years or more.

As for the registration process, unfortunately, there aren't a lot of options available.  

Good to know -- thank you for your work here!

[YinYang]

I haven't seen much spam at all. I used to delete a lot of it when I saw it but now I don't see any really.

I have to disagree. If you randomly select any of the ‘birthday’ suspect memberships they invariably contain spam information and links. I believe you are referring to the ones that take it as far as posting on the board; these are more readily dealt with by our administrators who I thank. However it would seem most just contain spam within their bogus membership and it is their collective number that is overwhelming the board.

I was under the impression that only administrators can delete spam membership so please explain how non administrators can do this action?

[bruffman]

Thank you so much BattlesandDeaths for your hard work to keep this Board open.

[gyno9001]

Yes B&D we all owe you many thanks for your time and energy to keep the board open and functioning!!!   Perhaps to do some weeding, you might consider sending suspect accounts an email asking them either some question(s) or if you can get a CAPCHA thing were you have to click a box to prove you are a human, and all this with a 10 day time limit to respond... that might whack out some.