The new forum software has one of those "type in what this image is showing" Captcha tests to fill out before you can get an account. With that to stop the spam-bots, I've switched from manually verifying every single user to allowing the forum to do it automatically. I've been manually catching as many as 20-30 spam-bots a week over the last 6 weeks or more.
One spammer slipped through a few days ago, and since I was going out of town I just turned off auto-approval until I was back in town (Dragon*Con for 5 days, *MUCH FUN*).
There are about 145 new users pending, and after a once-over I'm going to approve them all. Welcome all new people! Spammers, suffer a slow and horribly embrarrasing sexual disease.
Bear with us for a few days if a few spammers slip through. If the Captcha thing doesn't do the trick I'll go back to manual approvals.
--- saint