gogtrial34987: FWIW, GOG, my experience as a moderator on other forums shows that if spam gets consistently deleted/hidden within minutes after being posted, that will significantly reduce the amount of return spammers, and eventually (after a year or so) even the total amount of spam attempts. But as soon as spam is allowed to linger for multiple hours, it serves its purpose (being indexed by search engines), so will lead to ever more spam.
Please step up your efforts here, somehow! (Maybe a couple of community janitors with the sole responsibility of deleting spam or something like that? You really need around the clock coverage...)
What GOG needs is a preventive measure. There are several potential avenues that have been openly and plainly presented to GOG, and exactly 0 which have been implemented.
A) Prevent users from posting to the forum unless they have proof of purchase (even a free game will do).
B) Charge users for the privilege of using the forums (it works for SomethingAwful, and makes people think twice before making low effort posts); this could be accomplished though a paid purchase of a game.
C) Implement a Jr status forum where the brainless and neophytes can be corralled until they prove themselves to be vetted or worthy, and banned otherwise.
D) A probationary period for all new forum users, where they gradually get more forum privileges over time.
E) An actual forum with preventative measures baked in. Even the D programming forum (DFEED) has this.
F) A rap sheet, where the misdeeds of a user can be tracked and viewed as a public shame.
And I'm sure there's plenty of other ideas that would better at
preventing the door from opening in the first place.