Restricting New Members?

[TonyMacaroni]

I haven't looked through the Admin options to make sure this is possible, but it seems likely that it is: how do you guys feel about closing off new registrations? I've recently stopped banning new IP addresses, names, and email addresses in order to stop spam because the task seemed overwhelming and wasn't actually reducing the amount of spambots we get. However, we aren't really getting new real members anyways, we seem to be sticking with the same already registered group of active posters, so basically all new registrations are spam accounts. If we set up a ban on new accounts and someone we knew really wanted to join the forums, we could probably arrange to let them register regardless.

[TonyMacaroni]

OK, so I've gone ahead and done something like this. New accounts now require manual admin validation, and are removed after one day if not validated, so if someone legitimately wants to join the forum they need to let someone know so that they can validate their registration. Hopefully we'll be seeing less spambots in the future. If that doesn't work an option still exists to disable new registrations.

[Coop]

Can you make it more than one day? I don't think the spambots are so heavy that it would be impossible to find a real person amongst the clutter, and it might be pretty inconvenient if someone had to reregister just because we didn't see their name in time.

Also, maybe make the registration thing send them an email telling them to email one of us? Spambots wouldn't do it, but real people would.

[TonyMacaroni]

Alright, validating accounts now last 10 days. Couldn't find an option to send an email telling them to email us. The closest thing would be to have us recieve emails telling us when a member signs up and needs validation, which would basically just bury one of us in validation emails for spambot accounts. Added a thingy to the rules instead.