Idea to cut down on spammers

[husker boxster]

I like this thread and topic. Our spammer is getting tiresome. It appears the moderators are reacting faster to spam alerts but the bugger keeps coming. So we need to come up with new measures to thwart them.

Woody, I like your idea of a thread response count. Would 25 be too high? Looking at it from a legitimate new user. Maybe 10? Is a new user made aware of the count? (Woody, not asking you specifically, just throwing things out there.) Will the spammer just start responding to random threads to spread his crap? An advantage of a thread count is it might force the legitimate new user to search vs starting the typical newbie threads like "will these rims fit" or "what oil should I use".

Without getting geeky, would it be possible to ban IP addresses? This bozo is probably coming in with the same PC and would be the same IP addr ea time. Maybe set up a rule if you spread spam, your IP addr gets banned?

Just trying to advance the discussion and solve our community's problem.