Hello, all, I wanted to bring a point up from a user's perspective here so that it's being considered. In most cases, a lot of forums require someone to register to actually be able to access the forum's content (IE some of the links, downloads, etc. are only available to registered users), which might account for the high number of lurkers. For my case, I don't post often because I try and limit my postings to relevant topics. For instance, bugs I find in the betas and such, although I'm still trying to figure out how to post more informative things as the data I provide seems... insignificant and unhelpful, hence why I haven't posted much in awhile.
With regards to how to stop the spam postings... Would it be possible to implement a filter of some sort? This would flag certain domains, words found in a post, etc? IE, anything with words in the topic that contain sex-related stuff, viagra/cialis/etc (I can provide you with a variant list if you want since I've been getting a lot of spam Emails with this stuff in them lately :/ ). What I'm suggesting is something that a Yahoo group that I run uses where anything that seems suspicious gets flagged and set aside until a moderator can look at the message to make sure its not spam.
I hope these are helpful.
- KatLeeH