Think we were all hitting the mark as SPAM button.
The report button to a user would go to 10… But then what happens? The user gone or the thread???
Can we test on you Glenn?
Only kidding, I know its a real sore subject.
Smoke 'em out! :-D
You mean we don’t require approval for new members’ first threads?
Not in THIS forum, we don’t.
Apparently I missed the action. Hats of to all who took the heat, I was off duty at the time 
So it was the same users pumping out spam? I would have thought that a user account with low post count that receives multiple spam markings would automatically be frozen until sb had a chance to look at them. This isn’t the case? They can just spam away until sb wakes up?
Wow. That was indeed insane. Thanks SO MUCH to everyone who helped keep that under control. As a matter of fact, it was ALL gone when I arrived at the scene, with well over 500 reports in my email inbox! Well done gang!
Brief postmortem: There were 27 accounts, many of them registered with Outlook.* domains. I tried reporting the addresses to Outlook.com, but they weren’t at all interested in even trying to understand the issue. Shame on Microsoft and Outlook.com for their indifference.
From what I can tell, the accounts were probably manually created by hand, because there was enough variation in the quantity and style of the optionally filled-in information (“Location” field, avatar, etc.) to suggest that a human probably created the accounts. Then s/he proceeded to use an automated click tool to send a fire hose of spam. So I changed the CAPTCHA, and I don’t think it will happen again, at least not soon.
EDIT: Interestingly, another spam account and post just now appeared. It was using a VPN, so utterly impossible to block. And it was definitely a human user, because it read and understood the new CAPTCHA, and then navigated click-by-click through the forum structure to create the post instead of using a direct link to post.
Most of the accounts got automatically disabled thanks to your collective vigilance. But they probably would have been disabled even faster if the correct button had been consistently used. I noticed that a large number of times the Report button was used on these posts, which is not the correct way to handle spam. The Mark as SPAM button should always be used on clear cases of unknown (usually new) users posting obvious spam, not the Report button. You can read more about it here:
Again, thank you all VERY MUCH for your help, I really appreciate it!
SB, I marked every one as spam. It was really hard to keep up with this idiot!
Thanks for clarifying the correct way to deal with them, it was insane
There was a aviator.
I have one question about this!
I was late to the party so I only managed to mark as SPAM 4 or 5 (new) threads.
However, there were 5 or 6 SPAM threads in the 1st page, that when I clicked on them I got the “Sorry, this is no longer available page” (or something like that)!
Weird, as they were still there, but I couldn’t see the content or mark as SPAM 
Can anyone explain why this occurs/occurred? I thought the threads were supposed to disappear after being hit massively on SPAM button.
Thank you kindly!
Yep. What happens is that a given thread has already been marked as spam by other users, then you open it, and then immediately after another user comes along and marks it as spam just before you do, and that user’s spam click is the “knock-out punch” that removes the thread. Therefore, it is no longer viewable to the public, but you already had it loaded in the browser, so it throws the standard “No longer available” message when you try to click the spam button.
Obvious someone beat you to the punch. De-spamming is a two-step action.
First you push the SPAM button in the right/down corner. Than you get a screen asking: are you sure?
Well, somone has reached step 2 a split-second before you did, just after you had pushed the spam button.
Edit: you beat me to the punch :confounded:
Speaking of beating people to the punch. :sunglasses:
Thanks for the explanations sb and Henk 
I knew there was something escaping me, it was the “timing”! Glad others made it to stop that annoyance (I only saw a few, but pages of spammers on BLF… no way 
! ) They finally saw the “light” :innocent:
Yeah, it was definitely a major spam attack, but the community response was also seriously impressive. When I found 500 new spam reports in my inbox I thought something had gone haywire with the site, especially when I couldn’t find any signs of spam on the public forum. Thanks again guys and gals!
BLF : defended by the SPAM-TROOPERS, WARRIORS OF THE LIGHT
I would of clicked the spam button but I was much to busy buying fake college degrees from all the Ivy league schools I could of never got into.
Look out Elon, who’s the smart guy now?
Well done everyone!!!
Haaaa! :money_mouth_face: