The spam e-mail leaves me less than amused.

hello.

I can't tell if you're a retard, or a spammer. You do not appear to be a bot. Bots spam in the RPG Maker Area, even though none of us get to see what they write.

Obviously a bot, tard. The only reason we get to see it is because it's in the "Introduce Yourself" forum.

Bots have a preferred music type of "123456".

Lol, they are getting smarter and smarter.. they said screw your forums permission post system!

The approval system is, in my opinion, slightly flawed anyway - if a new member posts in the Introduction forum, then if a Mod doesn't do anything within an hour it is automatically approved. Actually, it might be instantly for Introductions. Either way, I don't like it much.

Regardless of that, though, food could be better spent feeding the starving kids in Japan. Or luring back members who joined, said "hi!", and disappeared.

That isn't a flaw, it's an intended feature. The logic behind it is that if a new member joins, posts, and is ignored because nobody can see their posts, they will be less likely to stick around. It's better to have a few spams get through than have new members leave because there wasn't anyone around to approve them.

I don't agree with it - there are dead zones when no mods are online, which is when spam and pr0n bots can get through the filters.

I think a system in which any posts that include links and images not on the Zelaron server (that is, anything that isn't a smiley) are either sent into the approval queue and wait for a mod (rather than an automatic approval after an hour) or have the links/pictures stripped out before being instantly approved would be better for the Introductions forum. Probably the latter would be better, as posts would still get through instantly, but the bot/spammer posts would be plain text with no links or pr0nographic material.

My reasoning behind that - new members very rarely post anything with links or external images in Introductions, and those that do are more often than not a bot or spammer of sorts.