Perhaps we could prevent spam by carefuly reading through new registrations first before any new user is accepted onto the site as a member. We could make it clear upon registration that no new applicant will be accepted unless he or she fills in all of the fields in the about me section with meaningful and thoughtful ideas. People who are actually interested in learning about Italy will take the time to do this while spamers may be lazy and possibly discouraged. Just read some of the profiles of our good members...you will see long paragraphs that were well thought out. Spammers on the other hand write hardly anything except trash like this "0usdabsdkhsdjosdgojsdfjdclkdsvksdfklh" which I found on a new profile of somebody who spams our community regularly. I will not mention the user's name.

Now, It may take a day or two for new users to be accepted as members onto the site but it may be worth it if we can stop this barrage of spam!!! I would be willing to review a portion of the new applications and perhaps site moderators could also share some of the workload with me. Does this sound like a good idea?

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Dimmi con chi vai e ti dirò chi sei.

Giacomo - New registration is now automatic. maybe we should change to manual and request that the new member fills up something of his / her profile. I will check into it - Spam seems really too much
Paolo

Paolo,

I have found the checkbox and the list of choices to choose from in order to mark a post as spam. Now that I have figured it all out, I will be sure to delete spam as soon as I see it.

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Dimmi con chi vai e ti dirò chi sei.

I usually erase 3-6 spam threads per day, that's really too much. I don't remember, is there a Captcha system when signing in? It would be useful.
Also, Giacomo's idea is good, but maybe it could discourage some. I don't know if I would've registered if I had to "pass a test", I'd feel it as kind of smuggy
But having a moderator or an admin approve the new user is a common practice, and it's not too fastidious for users, nor too hard to do for us mods. That way we could not accept those with obvious spam names, like "iphonecheap1Hj2", and accept only if profile is at least half full.

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I thought the same thing Zidanie...it may discourage people from signing up and we don't want that!! Now, I am also a moderator and I have no problem erasing spam as well. We will have to see what Paolo wants to do and just go with that.

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Dimmi con chi vai e ti dirò chi sei.