In Reply to: re: re: re: re: puritanism posted by hmm on August 27, 2009 at 20:42:17:

That's because the moderators are usually very efficient at removing it before it's published and preventing it. The normal routine is to publish, read and delete. If you are a regular you may see a spam post for a few minutes before it's deleted.

The first line of defence of course is the bad words (aka the Oops) filter which has thousands of spam words in it. The blocked IP address file then has hundreds of spammers IP addresses that are also blocked before they can post.

Both of these lists are added to on a daily basis by the moderators.

Occasionally a misplaced comma can disable the bad words or IP address filter and the flood of spam that is released once the defences are down is unbelievable!

It's a bit like the old joke:

Q. Why do elephants paint their underbelly blue?
A. So you won't see them flying across the sky!

Q. Have you ever seen elephants flying?
A. No.

- Well you see it works!