[outpan]

wow, thanks a lot for your thorough advice :) tbh I really hate putting road blocks in front of people who would like to contribute to the database, however we were the victim of a huge spam attack with completely random ip rotations. I will eventually remove the mandatory sign up once we have a strong moderation system in place, this shouldn't be too far from now. Thanks again, I really appreciate your comment :)

[hayksaakian]

if people are rotating IPs to dodge your blockers, maybe you could shadow-ban them instead? that way they don't know that the IP is bad.

[outpan]

That's true; the mandatory sing-up is a temporary measure, I'm sure there are a lot of ways to fight spammers including the method you mentioned. Thank you for your suggestion.