Resolution to the spam filter problem (8/8/2011)

As many of you know, there have been some issues with the spam filter on this forum. I just found the root of the problem: I had recently added some custom word filters to our spam module that accidentally started blocking valid posts.

My sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this has caused. Also, I apologize if there are any who felt in some way censored by this situation — we do not censor anybody's views here and never intend to. We merely seek to restrict advertisements and profanity.

We have had a constant battle against spam on this forum, and we have been trying hard to keep it from interfering with the discourse here. Later this week we're going to implement some longer-term changes that should improve the situation:

• Migrate the forum to a newer version of our website software (Drupal)
• Update the spam module
• Install a more human-friendly Captcha system (Picatcha)

We hope that these changes will be transparent and will help cut down on spam without interfering. Please provide feedback if there are any problems!

Mark [BRAWM Team Member]