Normally, our Pending Member list- those who have applied for membership, and we are awaiting a confirmation e-mail from them- runs between 8 and 20 people.
I never hear from most of them...many are would-be spammers who sod off once they find out they really can't advertise here.
However, our current queue stands at: 44
I've suddenly started getting around 10 or more apps per day. NONE have confirmed so far. Many of the e-mail addresses turn out to be bogus and I can remove those immediately; otherwise this count would be a lot higher. Most of them appear to be obvious junk- random-letter usernames or our enterprising friends from the ever-popular .ru domains- but I have learned that you really can't always tell by looking, so I am sending follow-ups to all comers so far.
Not sure how we got so lucky all of a sudden, but what I'm really interested in is: How do we make it stop?
I do have the ability to block users by various criteria. However, I'd rather not do things like make the Saloon inaccessible from within Russia, in case there are more like Cheeky running around there.
Any creative ideas for how to block the onslaught of spammers?