Minimum requirements for posting in the Forums

I seem to be seeing more and more spam in the forums. People create accounts just for the purpose of being able to post spam. While the spam can be reported and removed, the forums could quickly devolve like other sites have devolved into spam posts taking up too much time to remove and becoming unusable due to the amount of spam. I suggest that some minimum be placed on an account before someone can post in the forums. Maybe some number of hours played? Some amount of books owned (i.e. money being spent), or something. I wouldn't suggest requiring a subscription because that would prohibit legitimate free users from posting questions but some amount of money - for books, playing games, or subscriptions, or something that would separate the spammers from the real players might work.

2 FA would be a good start to this ^^ Then - as a second stage - at least 1 hour of playtime here on Roll20 OR being GM of at least 1 campaign...

TheMarkus1204 said: 2 FA would be a good start to this ^^ Then - as a second stage - at least 1 hour of playtime here on Roll20 OR being GM of at least 1 campaign... This would take care of at least 99% of the current bots. I worry that the bots would just be reconfigured to meet those minimum requirements, and that would lead to some kind of verification arms race... but there would at least be a little respite from these annoying posts. I think I saw 6 just this morning!

I saw a bunch this morning - that's what prompted my post. All of the ones I saw were from "people" who had created their account within the previous few hours - no posting history, no gaming history, nothing. Jarren said: TheMarkus1204 said: 2 FA would be a good start to this ^^ Then - as a second stage - at least 1 hour of playtime here on Roll20 OR being GM of at least 1 campaign... This would take care of at least 99% of the current bots. I worry that the bots would just be reconfigured to meet those minimum requirements, and that would lead to some kind of verification arms race... but there would at least be a little respite from these annoying posts. I think I saw 6 just this morning! Jarren said: TheMarkus1204 said: 2 FA would be a good start to this ^^ Then - as a second stage - at least 1 hour of playtime here on Roll20 OR being GM of at least 1 campaign... This would take care of at least 99% of the current bots. I worry that the bots would just be reconfigured to meet those minimum requirements, and that would lead to some kind of verification arms race... but there would at least be a little respite from these annoying posts. I think I saw 6 just this morning!

2 FA would only stop the bots... although I suspect some of the more sophisticated bots can bypass even that.  As for one hour of playtime, or being GM... that's too easy to beat since a free user can create a new game and "play" it for an hour or two. I'm betting bots can do that too. I've seen very sophisticated bots - some can even play games like World of Warcraft or Hearthstone or some of the other Blizzard games. TheMarkus1204 said: 2 FA would be a good start to this ^^ Then - as a second stage - at least 1 hour of playtime here on Roll20 OR being GM of at least 1 campaign...

Although this might be true, given the amount of time spent on this for a single forum post before they get banned permanently is not worth it. Even though there are real people behind it... Saul J. said: 2 FA would only stop the bots... although I suspect some of the more sophisticated bots can bypass even that.  As for one hour of playtime, or being GM... that's too easy to beat since a free user can create a new game and "play" it for an hour or two. I'm betting bots can do that too. I've seen very sophisticated bots - some can even play games like World of Warcraft or Hearthstone or some of the other Blizzard games. TheMarkus1204 said: 2 FA would be a good start to this ^^ Then - as a second stage - at least 1 hour of playtime here on Roll20 OR being GM of at least 1 campaign...