Hi everyone,

We apologize for the recent spam attack. There were hundreds of posts within a very short time, making the site unusable. It was especially painful for those users who received every post via email.  The site was also shut down for several hours as a preventative measure, until we were able to deal with the problem. 

We are committed to fighting spam and keeping the site useful.

With help from Istvan Albert, who wrote the software that powers the site (see Biostar link at the bottom of the page), we were able to quickly add a google "recaptcha" to the site, which can determine pretty accurately whether a user is human. So now in order to register for the site, in addition to having a valid email address (you have to click on a link received via email), you have to be human, as determined by recaptcha.

It looks like one spammer came back after this was implemented, but because he or she had to manually log in (and was quickly banned from the site) , we hope this will die down soon. We will look into implementing other anti-spam features that are in the main branch of Biostar (such as rejecting posts that are not in English). 

I'd like to remind all site moderators (whose names are listed on the right hand side of the FAQ page), that you can delete posts (and take other moderation actions -- click the Moderate link on any post to see them).

Again, we apologize for the annoyance and inconvenience. If you experience any other problematic issues with the site, let us know.

Dan