Wtfh has happened to this place? BRAVO MODS!!!! LOOOOOL I said BRA!!! ='p R.I.P the forums of UberEnt.
They really do need more mods in here. Well, really they need to hit the problem at the source and have better bot prevention, but unfortunately it's not as easy as it sounds. Those jackasses out there making the bots are pretty darn clever, and modern bots can circumvent a lot of security measures. Honestly though the best security measure to put in place is the simple question. Bots can scan captchas, but they can't compute logic and answer questions. You can add security questions for registering users to answer like, "What was Uber's first game?", etc. Heck, you can do easier questions than that, most bots aren't equipped to answer them.
Or just a new 'position' of 'spam remover' - I'd volunteer. I spend loads of time reporting the spam so a few extra clicks to remove it would be no big deal.
You're right, its not as easy as it sounds. It's far easier than it sounds to create bot prevention. I knew how to create bot preventing captchas in my first PHP class in college. Create a handful of crazy letter/number images, then create a validator using Regular Expressions, for sign up. It really is easy, they just dont take the time to do it. Hell theres captchas out there you can get GIVEN to you. Ubers just lazy, and it really showcases not just in the forums, but in their flagship game.
Some of the Captchas available for phpBB are incompatible with various themes, various versions, etc. Also, they don't all work (look at the reviews of the captcha plugins). Like I said, the question/answer method tends to be the most reliable, but sometimes that plugin is also incompatible with some themes. Only the default image captchas, which are pretty unreliable, are compatible with all phpBB themes. I also can't remember whether or not Uber requires users to respond to an email when they register, but that can dramatically cut down on the number of bots, since not all are equipped to create legitimate emails and answer them.
Re: Ortega, Norris and Sanuyem: Gibraltar Cool. EmBox has been doing a great job with cleaning up the forum, IMO.
