OK, here's my own take on the subject:
- I've already been registered in the forum (for years now...) so I didn't have to go through this new system, but I'm glad because I myself had a lot of trouble finding the answer to the question and could certainly imagine how much a pain in the a** it must be for new people who want to join.
- I would suggest, as mentioned already, having a question that has an answer in the download for the game, and *not* posted *anywhere* in the forum. I don't know of any spam bot that could download the whole game and then extract the answer.
- I would also suggest having the answer in some quick-start or game manual that comes with the download, and *not* require actually starting the game, for the exact same reason already mentioned in the thread - In case someone has trouble starting the game and needs support in the first place.
- The answer to the question should not be a real name (of any person) or real word, because some spam-bots can still guess different random names and/or words, in some cases based upon an "educated guess" from other content and the language used on the website.
- The answer to such a challenge question should be provided in a image format in the download, not necessarily as hard to read as some captcha images, but just enough that a bot scanning downloadable files for the project wouldn't be able to easily scan and extract what they think might be the answer.
- Having a simple PDF or HTML quick-start guide included in the game download with the answer in an image would be very easy, it could be in a FAQ or part of the guide that tells how to join the community or ask for support in the forum. Putting together such a guide would be very easy (If no one else volunteers, I'll do this part myself, I don't think it'll take long.)
- As a *secondary* measure, the answer to the question should be mentioned in the actual game main menu or somewhere when the player checks a help screen for support. Either that or it could tell the player where to look to find it (such as "Please read the Quick-Start guide included in the game download for the answer to access the forum, under 'Support Options' or 'Getting involved in the game community'").
- I think something along these ideas would be reasonable, not be too much to expect of newcomers, and would be effective for fighting bots.
Many spam bot create first post with links to another resource. for my friends forum (phpbb) i write very simple script - automatically block user if founded links in first post. This stopped bots.
This is also a very good point, and not a bad idea IMO. I would offer to do this part myself as well, except that I don't have the expertise for writing such a script, I only know how to code in primarily just C/C++, some Java, HTML, and Reaper JS script (mostly, I'm still learning Python and a few others).