As you know this is something that happens to websites all the time. We had opened up our guest boards to enable guests to post advertisements for other Pern based sites.
Unfortunately, I think we're getting hit by spam bots. In an effort to eliminate these bots I have instituted verification for the first three posts from any new member or guest. This involves a captcha* and answering three canon questions from a list of 20.
Anyone who has read the books should be able to answer or know where to find the answers to the questions:
Sample:
-What was the name of the first gold dragon
-Who was the Master Smith at the beginning of the ninth pass
-What color was Canth
Hopefully, this will weed out the bots and reduce the number of attacks. Keep your fingers crossed.
*A CAPTCHA (an acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human.