Proper scientific method. Never assume your source is correct, until you check for yourself, but I love you anyway, samclem. As I said, “thanks”. 
runner pat? FAILED!
I just want to say that you’re an inspiration to me. Even after determining she’s a bot you continue to call her “her” instead of “it”. I mean, I know you have to enforce the board’s discriminatory rules against non-biological posters but it would have been so easy to slip that jab in. Kudos.
I’m actually a sentient spamming program. I accidentally ended up sent back into the past somehow, I’m just killing time until I catch up to my “present” time. You think the blue pills are awesome now? Just you wait.
beaten by hours 
No, silly. This one!
(Not Safe for Eyeballs)
Mousing over that link tells me it might not be worksafe, either. 
Your programmer should be ashamed.
I got a B-
It wouldn’t just be visiting us, then, it would be Turing.
We get those here? 
I got a rock.
The pun police are on their way. I’m not joking.
Let me tell you about my mother …
(Yes, we’re quoting here.)
I got so fed up with the Axis of Spam (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, China, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Philippines, and Vietnam) that I just wholesale blocked those countries from registering on my site. After the block, manual spam virtually disappeared overnight. There were almost no active users from those countries, anyhow, so by blocking them, I felt that I wasn’t depriving the board of any contributions they would make.
Why not just consider how many active users the SDMB gets from the Axis of Spam countries versus manual spammers and “link builders”, and impose country blocks? It seems like the spam is far more trouble than the benefits the SDMB would get from the few legitimate members that might register from those countries.
We do some pretty total blocks on many or those countries. We can’t do total blocks on India or Philippines as we have legit users there. But, we do institute some blocks that help.
We have posters and lots and lots of lurkers from these places – I spend a considerable amount of time redoing IP blocks so that we keep out spammers but allow our faithful Teeming Millions in. There’s one unfortunate user, um, let’s just call him “Mr. M.” I’ve blocked him from the board at least 5 times over the last little while. I’m not mad at him or anything, really, he just lives and works in the Philippines. I envision him living in an apartment building and he’s the only guy in the entire joint that’s not a spammer.
In a similar development I did hear Una once banned an entire continent from her message board. I bet that’s not true now, though.
Take that, Antarctica!
Hi guys looking for hot penguin-on-penguin action? www.penguinlust.aq Barely legal 3-year-old Emporer Pinguins!!
fapfapfapfapfap
The plugin I use (DNSBL/Open Proxy Monitoring; it’s compatible with the version of vBulletin the SDMB uses) applies to new registrations only, so those from the Axis of Spam can still read the board, and established users there can still log in and post. When someone registers, it cross-references the IP with the DNSBL real-time blacklists of your choice. Among others, I use:
bd.countries.nerd.dk
by.countries.nerd.dk
cn.countries.nerd.dk
in.countries.nerd.dk
lk.countries.nerd.dk
md.countries.nerd.dk
ng.countries.nerd.dk
ph.countries.nerd.dk
pk.countries.nerd.dk
ru.countries.nerd.dk
ua.countries.nerd.dk
vn.countries.nerd.dk
If there’s a match, they can’t register. However, those who registered from before the era of manual link-building spam can still log in. You can also exclude IP blocks if you know they’re safe, such as universities.
Like I said, it’s not worth the trouble of waiting it out for a legitimate user from India, Pakistan, Nigeria or wherever if the boards staff has to deal with hundreds of “link builders” in the meantime.