I'm removing only the ones I am certain are spammers of one kind or another; if there's any doubt I leave them. 99.999% of the ones I find have no posts here (becuase eiher they never posted or becuase the posts were already nuked, and the user banned)
If I have to check I do so by searching for their same username/IP on other forums (sometimes via google and sometimes via the StopForumSpam and similar sites) to see if they left spam there, if no posts exist here and they weren't already banned here. If they are banned here, they go. If they have signature spam or website link spam, buhbye.
If they have real posts that show they are not a spammer, and those posts are not copypasta off some other site (very common), I leave them alone.
Anyone that seems even a little to be a "real person" I leave alone.
That said, I just nuked another 240 of them, going back thru the next 500 members (so back to what was #1500 before I did this, but is now I guess #1310). It also includes a few found in other searches, by keyword in the username field. But that still makes about half of our "members" just spammers.
I started the keyword search because it will help me weed out a lot of spammers without having to dig thru the main memberlist for them, which is very time-consuming. .
I searched on these keywords already, and nuked the definite spammers among them:
rolex watch a123 online internet trade wow gold buy solar hotel china handbag purse jacket lithium sale coach viagra phentermine cheap porn pron casino store game polo
I have yet to get to doing these keyword searches in the username field:
polo battery deal fiji island facebook youtube myspace ebay essay www http battery bms bike bicycle motor xbox 360 nintendo wii top list property invest rent housing house afford joy fay phone stock game power level sell tera gear glass cig newport site part *.* wheel periactin discount ugg money pharm free bonus sex teen
and then there are the ICQ searches, since a surprising percentage of spammers fill in the ICQ field, but few real members do. It won't just find anything using * in the field, so instead I can use *(number)* in the field (like *0*) and it'll find anything with that digit in it. Same for 1-9. FWIW, the *1* search finds 921 users with an ICQ number containing a 1. Just glancing at the first page of that 19-page list, there's at least a dozen suspected spammers without even going into the profiles (whcih I'd have to do to verify if they really are spammers).
Anyway, I'm gonna go play with the dogs nwo cuz they're all really bored of me staring at the computer clicking things. :lol: