[quote=@Ellri]
True, its not indication of their (lack of) vindictiveness or such. but there are fewer of those, and using pure statistics, the fewer people you pick, the fewer of the "bad" type you'll most likely get.


[s]A limit of 1 new topic every five-ten minutes for the first 50 posts and up to five posts per fifteen minutes or 10 posts per hour seems like a less troubling barrier for new players while still stopping most bots.[/s]
On that thought... Account age might be just as relevant a barrier for such... Not many bots survive beyond their first day or three... so:
if account has less than 50 posts: 1 new topic every 10 minutes max
If account has less than 100 posts: 2 new topics every 10 minutes max
If account is less than 72 hours old, no more than 5 posts every fifteen minutes

Are those restrictions better, [@Kangaroo], [@Shienvien]?
[/quote]

It depends whether we're discussing the spambots we've specifically recieved here or the more general ones that exist on the internet. In terms of what we've experienced so far, there's two distinct spam bots, the Vance Miller which makes on thread and is never touched again (which is not a huge issue due ot low volume) or the Korean gambling spambot which generated a few hundred topics in a few minutes.

In terms of stopping those bots, restrictions should be time based as the posting occurs straight after creation. So something like the 1 new topic every 10 minutes would work but the step up should be based on time, i.e. say a week because the spambots I've seen make an account then spam straight away. 

I think the focus for right now is to stop the Korean gambling spambot as quickly as possible as a short term fix so we can open regristrations and then organise the exact specifics of other restrictions in due course.