In honesty QQ, It would be possible to allow people to post straight away with no timing delay, however it requires one of the Dev's to actually configure it. Heck I could fix the problems if I had the priv's however I don't which is a bit of pain. It's agonising to see itches that need to be scratched and not be empowered enough to do so, so instead we are just left with this irritable body, throwing itself around in some fit to alleviate what's causing the distress but not actually getting anywhere with it.
In some ways what you are expressing is actually a good thing... it shows as other posters are also showing a keen interest in the welfare of the forum.
My main concern is that the site dev. do not make the mistake of underestimating the potential threat this spamming poses if a flood occurs.
Last night two usernames appeared [that I noticed] one after the other both delivering relatively small volumes of spam. The concern is that the dev. realise what would happen if say 100 usernames delivered a large volume of spam and then consider that the numbers are merely abstract as the generation of spamming usenames can be severe. example : say an indefinite number of spamming usernames is generated. As many as they can before the site dev. stops registration. The possibility to flood the board appears to exist and that is why I started this thread.
I visited one forum that had been flooded as the owner had left the forum for a few days for a holiday. A huge number of posts like in the vacinity of 30,000 + had rendered the entire forum unworkable. I guess the admin had a huge task of deleteing all the spammer usernames labourously one by one which probably numbered in the thousands. His best option was either back up if he had a valid [no sleeper usernames] one or abandon the forum and start again.
I have about 6 or so empty forums uploaded [Kunena] that have no main menu links waiting for publication as they are preinstalled in a web software package I developed. These are hit on a regular basis with bots possibly Vandex style bots that register numerous accounts and immediately spam those fora. To stop this I had to change the fora settings to reject registrations completely, install an intrusion monitor and lodge a intrusion report upon all attacks to the software.
Also worth considering the number of spamming emails this forum generates to all those subscribed to the various threads and topics. Last night I recieved I think about 8 emails spamming me from sciforums.
If a flood occurs millions of email spamming messages could be sent out to members before the server was shut down.
I guess what I am saying is, as you Stryder, are already well aware of, is that the use of robotic crawlers [ie. Yandex and other] with malicious intent means that it is easy to underestimate the potential and severity of a bot attack if a weakness if found.
And the worst part from a global perspective, is that these bots were probably started years ago and forgotten about... simply a rogue with out governance untill someone actually manages to work out how to turn them off. Blocking is one thing but to remove them from the web entirely is another.
