[repolfx]

Yes, for sure any implementation is very much about the design subtleties. I did work once on an email spam filter so I have a pretty good idea of the complexities involved in that space, which includes things like some people's spam being other people's ham, people replying to spams, problematic user interfaces and so on.

My point is a more general one: people argue for censorship as the only way to maintain a workable forum, but, I don't believe that, based on my prior experience. I'm not saying it's easy to build a really great spam filter for social forums, but Slashdot proved out a lot of good techniques, and anyway censoring stuff en-masse just creates a different set of problems: social rather than technical.