If you notice, every spam post uses ☆____☆ so just auto-delete every post who uses more than 2 of ☆ or who uses ☆____☆
In all my time here I haven't seen an RP use this image.

One way is for the mods to look at the log-in emails, although its not the best way, it can help if the email provider is something obscure. There are many sites out there that offer temporary email services or non-public emails so a block could be placed on those providers.

<Snipped quote by NuttsnBolts>

When a new user is created, they're automatically added to a list that moderators have in the moderator forum. It shows their username, the email address they registered with, and a post count. So, really, all the reporting people are doing is somewhat redundant, as we can tell who the spammers are simply by following the generated moderator list and applying common sense. Now, that said, when it's happening this frequently and on this large a scale, it's almost impossible to keep up with, regardless of the information we have at hand. More moderators won't necessarily fix the problem because the bots will simply find a way to eventually circumvent our efforts and we can't all be around all the time. (That's just life.) Once Mahz puts his new system in place, whatever system that happens to be, we'll be able to keep things like this from happening and clean up the forum more effectively. Patience is key in this situation, however frustrating it happens to be in the meantime.

TL;DR -- The bots will get theirs in the end. Just sit tight. We'll handle it.

y'know... if you want to make a truly sneaky spambot... have it post regularly the first ten posts, then in the 11th, make its top half regular and the bottom pure spam... Or somesuch other convoluted system that is as not beneficial as spam from post #1.

Oh boy they are back guys DON'T PANICthe squad of Killing f Span Bots is here.

roleplayerguild.com/users/dvgsgdsfds

I'm still working on the problem, but I wasn't able to allocate enough time to finish my objectives this weekend so it's going to spill into the work week.

My main objective is to make it easier for mods to nuke spam accounts. We used to have this feature, but I'm reimplementing the "Nuke Account" button that lets us (reversibly) annihilate accounts and all their topics/posts/PMs in one click.

My other objective is to slow down the rate at which spammers can pollute the forum. I'll start with a Recaptcha per topic/post, but ideally new (untrusted) accounts will have a rate-limit that gets relaxed as they become trusted.

That combo makes it annoying for spammers to spam while making it trivial for mods to undo the spammers' work, with little impact on existing members. As I mentioned earlier, there are more robust ideas I've been considering, but they take much more dev work and can be built on top of the two approaches above.

It's mostly done, but I'm currently testing my progress so far.