obviously a simple mods can\'t do it, not form the forums standpoint access level of a mod, but ANYONE with access permissions to the files themselves via shell or FTP can alter the files, and the forums would not care how that is. that is up to the server permissions and admins to assign those permisions.
it goes without saying that being a mod doesn\'t give you the option of changing the code, only working with the portions reserved for mods access such as in many ofurms post regulation and other small things normal users cannot do like moving threads or posts, locking them, deleting them, etc.
no forum would give file access simply to someone of the moderator group.
but the site/server administrators could add these little changes easy. even blocking IP ranges from those countries originate from. here that may not be a good thing if there are actual beneficial users coming form those areas where the problematic posts are coming from.
i am tempted to write up some code and palce it in the forum here to handle this for those with site access to see if they can use to modify the forums to do jsut this task of blocking the spam and such.
one of the reasons in the past i said the site should be overhauled to give it that added functionality that semingly some bots have found the site and can easily access it where other simple forums have already implementing simple methods to prevent such.
oh here is an idea!!!!!!
ROBOTS.TXT
put one in each directory of the forums to prevent future web searches from dispalying the forums. that would hide them from all but the most unscruopulous webcrawling engines and mean that only someone who knows explicitly of the existance of the forums and their URL to be able to get to them....
unless some other method of finding them from the front page is derived, but most of the spam bots don\'t disect pages in order to find links to possible forums in which to spam.
meaning only two people that i know of could make changes to prevent it. borg or Chern An that code(d) the forums portion of the site.
sadly many options exist, but all are only open to those with file access permissions.
just keep squahsing them at a mod level ASAP like has been done for now is all that can be expected until other parties get involved with nipping it in the bud before it ever makes it to the forums.
