IME forum software in 2024 sucks. You have a choice between either old software like phpBB, vBulletin, SMF with a ton of vulnerabilities that you have to constantly maintain against an endless horde of botspammers, or you can use a 'modern' forum like "Discourse" with a phone-centric UI that is basically-unusable for actual humans.
Bot-filtering is a tough one. The only real way it can be done is a mandatory singular introduction-post with descriptive skill-testing questions, and then a person manually approving the account for general posting. But that's both labor-intensive, and an ideal spot for the discord-moderator-types to infiltrate.
IME forum software in 2024 sucks. You have a choice between either old software like phpBB, vBulletin, SMF with a ton of vulnerabilities that you have to constantly maintain against an endless horde of botspammers, or you can use a 'modern' forum like "Discourse" with a phone-centric UI that is basically-unusable for actual humans.
Bot-filtering is a tough one. The only real way it can be done is a mandatory singular introduction-post with descriptive skill-testing questions, and then a person manually approving the account for general posting. But that's both labor-intensive, and an ideal spot for the discord-moderator-types to infiltrate.