Tons of new spam

Sorry for all the spam folks.  I'm working on getting the comments cleaned up. 

I am also deleting spam and blocking spammers in the last days... It's a real horror!

That's the price we all pay for the privilege of being here.

Freedom is not free.

All of you are doing a spectacular job.

Thanks for a great site...Rob.

what??? I wanted to get an illegal passport!

"what??? I wanted to get an illegal passport!" - Amey

Well you'd better hurry! - I reported the Yahoo email address to Yahoo, so that particular email address could be terminated soon..

But if you really want to try, I could email it to you! ;-)

Which passport were you after? ... I still may have some contacts from my dark days as an international spy... ( but you must know that - One cannot really get into theremin technology without being mad, drinking large quantities of Smirnov, or being Russian or a spy or both.. As I am not mad, dont drink, and am not Russian...  ;-)

Fred.

I'd suggest a compromise: The read-only access to our forums should remain free for everybody. 

People who want to write should sign up and their registration should be validated by one of the admins after 24 to 48 hours. This would raise the bar for potential spammers.

Allow new "members" to sign up and post, but prevent them from posting any form of link until they have submitted say 5 "worthwhile" postings... Perhaps also prevent posting of links for the first week or two after registration.

Spam without links isnt useful to a spammer - if some 'bot' could be installed to check postings for any form of link (or email address), and check simultaneously how many posting the member has made and how long they have been registered, and only allow link-free postings unless they pass the qualifying number / time, then the whole process should be automatable.

"validation" by an admin is likely to be quite burdensome on the admins - particularly if spammers get busy.. Notifying new members of the restrictions when they sign up will allow genuine theremin newcomers to ask the usual "which theremin should I buy" type questions without any problem - and to post freely when they have qualified by not posting spam.

Fred.