A few things...

Taking care of a forum is difficult at times, especially when you have hundreds of new signups daily. The most important thing that should be on everyone's mind is member retention. When a new user comes to a board and sees spam, that's not a good look, and could possibly entice him to do the same. When a member has his threads spammed time and time again, it's not so good for the community. When you run a community you need to run it efficiently. There are no excuses for this, because there are many simple solutions available.

  • You implement a moderation tool for new members. This will be done on the Admin side. This moderation tool will allow you to set various settings based on post count. Also you can manipulate the settings to include strings such as; visit <link>. If a new member posts a link within his first X Posts, it would be set to moderation. The member automatically thinks his post went through - so not to deter him from continuing to post. However, his thread will not appear until a member of the staff approves or denies it.


  • Removing the "probation" term. It's unprofessional and not necessary. Everyone who is new, knows that they are new. There is no need to slap them with a label like "Probation". Very corny... All eyes are on the new guy to begin with. New Member is much better and makes your new real members happy.


This is a sophisticated community, built on helping others. It needs to help itself first internally. I know most of the modifications installed on here, and what I am talking about is already installed. However, it will take the willingness of someone on the staff to step up and say "I will be the one to moderate the new member posts that are sent to moderation review". If nobody is willing to do this, then this problem will remain.

+1 Froomple