Reporting inappropriate content

Excellent idea izogi, and while we are talking about this. How about not replying to the spam guys, it just means that the posting goes to the top of the list.

How about we tell them to bugger off and then block them......as for the technicals of such a deed, I am at a loss. If it can't be done then so be it, but they bug me enough to warrent me to tell them to hoik their wares elsewhere. OK, so it probably makes no nevermind and as you say probably sends them to the top of the list, and for that I apologise, but I find it hard to resist.......as I would find it just as hard to resist making my frustrations clear should me and Spam ever meet face to face.

I agree these people are a pain in A#@# maybe 3 strikes and there blocked,I dont know if Matthew can block people can he ? Lindsay

I don't think blocking accounts would work. I finally disabled the ability for people to create accounts on my blog (which isn't necessary anyway) at the same time it became apparent that someone was just running a program to create new random-named accounts. You're very rarely dealing directly with real people when spam's involved. It's all done on a mass scale, and chances are the same spam being posted here is getting auto-posted with fake auto-created accounts to hundreds or thousands of other website forums. As an addition to my initial suggestion, if things were to be auto-hidden it'd probably make more sense to do it on a post-by-post basis rather than threads. Sooner or later spammers will just start responding to existing threads.

izogi you have a good site windy.gen.nz you have put alot of work into it,i had a quick look at it at lunch time i will have a better look when i get home Lindsay

Izogi's idea is a good one. Though I can't see why it should need more than one person to report content as inappropriate to trigger hiding of a message and suspension of the user's account. If you're worried about misuse of such a facility, I'm sure that a number of the regulars here would be happy to have our accounts marked as 'moderators', allowing you to restrict the ability to do this to a trusted few. I can think of 3 or 4 names that would give you daily coverage! However, I realise that this would be ineffective until a means of blocking automatic account creation has been implemented. A 'enter the following text' prompt in your create account page, with a graphic of some disguised, non-machine-readable text to enter, being the standard way of doing this. There's a few free algorythms out there to implement this. More work for you implementing it in the short term, I realise, but would provide a long term solution, and shift the responsibility for policing from your shoulders.

Hi everybody, Sorry I've been very busy lately! I'm still catching up on things. Yes, I can block people, but they can create a new account with a new email address. It would certainly be quicker if anybody (or a selected set of people) could do it and I think this is probably the way to go. Madpom -- there is actually already an reCaptcha system in place, so new accounts do need to be created manually. This slows people down, but they can still do it.