[vivek_]

Also slightly more intelligible yet useless spam like this:

http://seqanswers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56416

[ECO]

Seems to be only one account (slowly) getting through at the moment. Depending on what permissions they get, you might want to just deputize a few more moderators.

Happy to...volunteers welcome!

Another possibility, at present, is to prohibit the use of non-ASCII unicode characters in new posts, if you have that kind of flexibility...

I am working on installing a totally new spam protection, probably when I upgrade to vBulletin5...

Looks like the bots are working through the new "300 seconds between two posts" limit.

Yeah, this is a stopgap until I have a better system...

Thanks guys for bearing with this...I know it's annoying. We are getting hammered lately...

[dpryan]

I guess I'll volunteer, since at least that will spread out the time zone coverage a bit. BTW, the spammer seems to have gotten through somehow.

[maubp]

I'm also willing to wield moderator powers for banning the occasional spammer.

In the meaning the 300s rule means 5 minutes between posts, which sadly blocks my usual pattern of scanning the forum periodically and answering a batch of questions. I hope this stopgap can be replaced...

[bio_informatics]

Perhaps introducing "captcha" for first 15-10 posts would eliminate bots?

PS: I'm unsure how easy it is for site admins to introduce any new feature based on time, and financial resources.

[Brian Bushnell]

I highly recommend immediately banning or moderating all posts from new members with Korean (or, less-ideally, non-ASCII) characters in the title. These are all spam, and I think it really detracts from the site's reputation to constantly have the latest posts being spam.