I've been thinking that something like a shadow ban could be useful in these situations
A shadow ban works only on the account you use, the spammer who has 35 accounts in his bot is unlikely to read the forum from any one of those accounts. Unless you mean their current bots won't get a banned-error and don't realize they need to switch to the next batch of accounts > that would work!
I would love a captcha that would make them read the rules on the forum, like typing the second word, the last character or the first of a random rule around here.
I love it! It won't stop bots, but it will teach humans how to behave on the forum.
I agree with (mostly) all that has been said.
But, to be honest, from a couple of weeks I have begun to think that the best solution can be:
1.- Newbie's jail. Yes, I don't completely like it, but, given all the spams, newcomers, etc, I think this is the moment to implement that again. The forum is becoming a newbies-spam-fest and the place for "forever Juniors" because it is easy to create an infinite number of new accounts and just use the ctrl+C and ctrl+V buttons in your computer. If newbies can only post in one board, probably it will change it.
2.- 5 Merits to become Jr. Member. Why? When you become JR, under my proposal, you will be able to go out to the jail. If you have to earn 5 merits in order to do so, maybe the Jrs will have some quality. Just take a look at all those "forever juniors" we have in the forum: people with hundreds of posts and no merit...
Of course, it can make the merit farming and trade more "popular", but also easier to detect, for all the newbies will be in a jail, and the ones receiving non-deserving merits will be easier to discover.
This is just an opinion. I'm tired. I'm tired of just seeing how each day the newbies and Forever Juniors come and spam and spam the forum, endlessly.
I think in this jail, also we maybe will find some deserving merits newbies and ease the work to some concerned sources.
