Spam threads gone wild...

I just had a thought - that the spam may turn out to be a good thing. Any thread with the title magic or voodoo in it is likely to get deleted. We walk a narrow path here at the 'Gon. :)
Warning to manufacturers- do not call your latest product "love potion."

I had to use the "I'm not a robot" feature and thought it was a clever idea. In my case it was storefronts; it looked like Google street view. My only criticism was the images were poor quality.

Spam has infected this site. I'm looking less and less these last 2 month's.

Is there not a fix?

What I don't understand is that the offenders must know by now that their spam is a useless and futile effort to snag someone. I think it's more malicious in intent than we give credit. Cultural differences aside, they can't be that stupid and inept.

All the best,
Nonoise

They suddenly got pretty bad for a while.

And honestly, Elizabeth, I've signed up for the black magic get a girlfriend program. Can I have a strand or two of your hair???

It seems like less members are posting new threads. In the "Past 48 hours" there are only a handful of real threads.
I believe members are spending less time on the forum; many familiar monikers haven’t been involved lately.

I know Admin said they were working on it but wow, it's still being hammered with the same spam. I can't understand how they can't fix this.

It would probably require a massive update of the forum period.

Basically a new system of having a forum, new format, the whole works.

In that new but now 'normal' forum format, the software would have the ability to combat such heavy spamming.

This old system (that you are looking at right now), that is quite unique, does not have the ability to add on spam detection packages.

This was predictable. It was just a matter of time.

The posting of spam can be done by bots, and the forum software as it exists now, would not be able to prevent it.

It's simple.  Any new member's first post should be moderated, and the member deleted if that post is spam. 

It's 10am EST on a Wednesday  and there are 81 spam threads and about 10 legitimate. I've never seen anything like this online.
I know the Mods. are working on the problem, but at this point, the spammers have taken over the forum and are free to do as they will.

Admin,

This is how to fix the site from SPAM. Monitor each request coming in using a filter. Depending on the web site tech you are using this "filter" will be named differently. Each logged in user will have a username or identity token with the HTTP request. You guys have this saved in you user database. Cross reference this user identity with users who have recently created their login account. Limit these users from posting content based on any rules you guys come up with.

If your developers need someone like me to tell you this. You need new developers.

Thank you, Admin, all gone. But playing catch-up isn't a solution.