I've run a sports forum for almost 20 years. For 18 years of that, it was with no-registration-required to post. There are methods and wordlists to discourage s

I've run a sports forum for almost 20 years. For 18 years of that, it was with no-registration-required to post. There are methods and wordlists to discourage spamming and shadowbanning, but it was surprisingly tolerable all things considered. In recent years, anything pertaining to race or pandemic has been an absolute shitshow from local commenters and foreign agitators, but both are occasionally relevant to the forum (sports events being postponed or moved, etc) so I've been reluctant to can them completely. I eventually switched to registration-required, but in a way that no one noticed. But the other feature I added was flagging particular conversations as requiring a higher privilege level to post. Regular contributors can request a privilege upgrade to participate. This has helped.