They can usually, but you still have to check each user. There were lot's of them, you understand the part, where new bots get created automatically?

So disable new accounts for a while at least. So many things could be done to mitigate this.

Or allow posting (maybe to certain boards) by accounts only of a certain age. These both assume they haven't created hundreds of accounts long ago.

do you (have to check first)?

I say blacklist first and ask questions later. Like consider reinstating them if they write you a reasonably normal human email.

That would obviously kill the vast majority of the organic activity on the site.

One of my hobbies is hosting a weekly open mic/showcase event in my town at a venue the same evening every week. I often get confusion from people when I explain that it’s much easier to call out sick from my day job than miss a show, because even with perfect digital communication a cancelled show will still let people down that do show up.

Assume that I don’t have anyone on standby to fill in for me. My point is that organic engagement in any shared community is often tenuousand not “rational” in the way outsiders expect. These things are tenuous. Hope that sorta makes sense.

The posts came from many different agents, each with a different name, so it would have required roughly the same amount of work.

it is probably a wikipedia style wiki and doesn't need registration, so would probably have to ip range ban them