Question is simple enough - does every post and/or reply require mod approval before becoming visible?
Thanks in advance for any illumination on this topic…
The forum software works on “trust levels” based on how long you’ve been here and how many posts you’ve made. You have to browse the forum for 10 min to get to trust level 1, which lets you create new topics. I don’t recall what milestone is required for bypassing moderation, but I think it’s after you make some number of posts.
2 Likes
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate you taking the time to explain the dynamics.
This information should be posted and readily available; particularly the 10 minute “invisible wall” for new topics should be addressed by @discobot as it’s quite off-putting to sign up to a support forum and not be able to ask for help.
Again, thanks for the information.
3 Likes
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
yeah, spam is a massive issue with forums. Even with antispam plugins and measures, our old forum was getting dozens of spam posts per day and hundreds to thousands of dormant spam accounts signed up per day.
With the moderation and waiting period, I only have to reject a couple of spam posts per week and almost none of it has actually made it to the public-facing forum.
Look for a proof-of-work plugin for the forum software, or request one be made. It puts a hardware cost on posting.
It shouldn’t be prohibitive for 95% of posters but if someone tries to scale up it should be very painful for them.
Blacklisting certain regions and email domains is a good idea too.
This kind of system doesn’t seem sensible either as it encourages people to post in unrelated threads…
I obviously joined to post my question to the community. Do I somehow have to earn trust to do this on this rather strange forum? It’s the strangest forum I’ve ever visited. 
Yep.
As for the weirdness, it’s just the default (and recommended) settings for the discourse software.
It would be nice if my first post didn’t just disapear into the black hole of anti-spam limbo. I spent over a half hour composing the copy and couldn’t even review it in a pending state. Made me panic that all that work would be lost forever. (next time I’ll cut/paste a local copy just in case)
Aren’t emulation related forums targeted often, which is why the levels of trust are needed?