I don't know if this has been posted before, but I have another suggestion:

Make it a rule that everyone under a certain post count must APPLY before creating a new thread. This may sound like it is glorifying post-counts but it might actually work. With the average IQ of these fora sinking into the depths of Bushhood, it will help filter out any SPAM before it's even posted. This way, you can keep spammers from increasing their precious post-counts until they create a decent topic, thus increasing the amount of intelligent posts and decreasing SPAM.

What do you think?

NOTE TO KRISP: My IQ's 142. Eat it.

Just my opinion on this, but while this sounds like a great idea, if they're n00bs in the first place, they'll ignore the rule anyway. And even if it works, it would increase the workload on the staff quite a bit, for probably no real effect on the forums.

Um...you're in no position to talk about negative IQs. Especially since you posted this in the wrong place.

Oh, and no to your suggestion.

Actually, I have seen forums that have a setting to prevent a user with less than X posts from starting a new topic; they're forced to only reply to existing ones at first. Perhaps when we upgrade to phpBB3 we'll find such a feature.

Rio_Uk's entire idea reminds me so much of Nick's lovely April Fool's Joke last year, it's actually ridiculous. Also, I agree with JsXtm -- I don't think it'll help much.

And now that we've updated, IS there a feature like that?

Two things.

1) I think maybe, basing on Rio-UK's idea... maybe instead, when someone makes a bad topic, he/she (unless they're receiving a temp. ban if its their third topic that gets sent to the Lair) loses the priviledge to make topics for a while?

2) Just off-topic, but. I noticed something. nfield/swift53 said someting like "The only time you should take seniorty into consideration is when you're talking to a Gym Leader, Frontier Brain, or an Elite Four.". But isn't he a Brain himself?

Just checking <:P

1) Not a bad idea, actually, but might be difficult to implement.

2) I'm not positive, but that may have been before nfield returned to staff; he left a while back and then came back, but he may have only been a normal member at that point.

that was even before i ever became a moderator.

Just one thing- if the definition of SPAM is going to extend to stuff that could be done over PMs but winds up in threads instead, it seriously needs revision right now.

Not sure if the mods have noticed but the PM system of the board has completely clapped out- i mean outgoing messages being stuck in outboxes and incoming messages since part of the way thorugh january having completely vanished (while the message count itself stays accurate).

I already reported this 2 weeks ago in the board problems thread (in case someone runs with the old "this belongs in another thread" routine"), but the problem stiff hasn't been patched up although jigglypuff tried fixing it at the time.

My point is that anything that could normally be done over a PM simply can't right now (with the trading thread this is proving frustrating to say the least), so I think that in the interests of fairness, things that could otherwise be said in a PM that wind up taking place in a thread simply not be counted as spam for the time being.

The PM system works perfectly fine aside from an error in a script I made to prevent Sentboxes from getting full. That's the most logical explanation for the missing inbox messages, though it's still an odd error. The script is supposed to wipe out Sentbox PMs, not touch Inbox ones. Either way, I'm working on fixing it.