Admin Approval for New Registers?

Would requiring registering members to be approved by an admin before their account gets activated perhaps cut back on some of the spam around here, or would it make the forums less welcoming and appealing to new, potentially-valuable, members?

Hi Jon!Yes to both. The former is enabled by a control panel setting. The spam problem hasn't received much admin discussion, but that would likely change if the spam became worse or we received complaints.

Maybe a restriction on how many posts a new member can make before being approved by the admins?Say, two posts max before being approved.... that would at least stop those spammers who resurrect a gazillion year-old threads to post their spam from causing so much trouble.Then again, I don't really see it as much of a problem; it was just something I thought of with the last couple of spammers who showed up and remembering that many forums have such a system in place.

AFAIK, the automated spammers are successfully blocked by the forum.
This means that we only have to deal with the human (and I use that term most generously) spammers.Unfortunately this would require systems in place that would 'hurt' the new valid poster as much as the spammer.
And, ultimately, the spammer will get passed the security anyway.It is, as usual, a matter of balance - but I see no way of working against spammers without also working against valid new posters, and the spammers can never be stopped, only slowed.Here's an example of the lengths spammers will go to to get around anti-spam procedures: Corpses used to spell a gold-sellers web-page What a human can put in place, another can get around.