Is there any way to get rid of this spam automatically?

There's alot of spam topics on this forum all of a sudden. Is there any way to get rid of them automatically? Like, if there's nothing written in the topic, automatically delete it?

There is a lot of spam because in the weekend the admins have less time to delete it But it's not more then normal, all the topics first have to be approved by the admins before they become real topics so don't worry we can handle it.

We can't just auto delete stuff because the spam filter isn't 100% accurate.

Anyway we'll handle it

The amount of spam seems to be ever increasing, sometimes the active topics section on the mainpage is filled with annoying spam (even if the thread itself has already been deleted).

May I make a suggestion regarding spambots?

On a local forum it proved to be very effective to include a question into the registration form, that a bot can not answer (at least not until someone specifically rewrites the program to answer the question).

This should be something that can be easily answered by someone even only remotely interested in space.
Examples:
"What is the name of the nearest galaxy to our own milky way?" (Andromeda)
"What is the name of the main engine of both the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launch vehicles?" (Merlin)
"Which City did the Astronauts on board of Apollo 13 famously address when they "have had a problem"?" (Houston)

Of course this can't really stop so called "human spambots" but this should stop 99% of all automated spam software. And if a new software manages to answer the question, you just have to change the question to something new.

best regards,
marcus

Currently almost all spam on the forum are those human spambots, most spam is blocked by the registration process.

You'll neither find any spam on the forum itself, as new members their posts are moderated before being shown publicly. The problem on the frontpage is the wordpress plugin, it also shows posts that are not yet approved, therefor also all the spam in the moderation queue.

We haven't modified the plugin ourself as we're planning to release a total makeover of this website before years end. This time with all custom written code, except for the forum. We'll soon test the conversion scripts with the latest data, once it's stable, we'll replace the current website. No data will be lost. (But calendar will be offline at first).

Wow, another overhaul of the website? Impressive!

Thanks for all the information Sigurd

Here is the new site And the spam problem should be reduced to a minimum.

Vibrant is the word indeed! Very nice! Incidentally, cookies now seem to be coming from a different domain, so you may have to tweak your settings a bit if your browser is as heavily armoured as mine .

new site looks great! i love how slick the layout is.