Automated spammers (minus bamwar) haven’t really been a huge problem in Discourse because we are so hard to automate against being a full bore JavaScript application. I mean they fill out user profiles, upload profile images, and everything. Historically speaking, the trend has been toward 100% human spammers over time.
I dunno this feels more like we need CAPTCHA user creation plugin to me? I don’t feel “let’s disallow dots and plusses” is treating the underlying disease, it’s only addressing the symptoms of the problem? They already have thousands of accounts on this single gmail address. For example, using the username+ trick, someone created 748 accounts in the last 10hrs.
