What do you do on your board to minimize spam accounts?

[Mandoli]

I like to restrict registration, and set it so I can approve accounts. It helps a little bit, because I also do that to limit forum trolls and whatnot who pop in for the sole purpose of causing trouble.

If you need to be a little more strict, ask people why they're joining. You can't force someone to answer, and I get it. But some people don't tell me why they're interested in joining my forum. Therefore, they get nuked before they can join. I'll run IP checks on people who I think I can't trust on top of reading certain reasons for joining.

Kind of weird, I know, but it's something.

[IceMan PJN]

We have so few members (after deleting spam bots) and I've browsed the forum directory to find it a graveyard of dead forums with few members and little to no activity in years, so the last thing I want to do is make potential new members jump through hoops to get in. I've just been removing spam bots when they pop up. Maybe if we had a much larger community drawing more attention I might consider steps to tighten new registration but right now I don't want to discourage anyone. We usually have zero to two spam bots per day, which hasn't been overwhelming so far. Maybe if those numbers significantly ramped up I might have to get more strict, but for now they're just a minor nuisance for me.