[imported_silkroad]

Our forums get almost no spam, around 4 million PVs a month, and we don't use this mod. The best way to stop spam is to use a Bayesian classifier. This is how Google GMail works and this is how we do it on our forum. We wrote our own custom Bayesian classifier for spam management, and it works very good.

So, while you have a strong favorable opinion about this particular mod, and you certainly are entitled to be the mod cheerleader, you should also respect others opinions to help improve the mod. Your posts / replies to suggestions seem to have no purpose but to push-back on suggestions for improvements. You don't want to see it improved? Isn't that "odd"? There has been on update in about a year, isn't that right?

Using large flat files to map IP addresses is not the way GeoIP mapping is generally done. Most everyone who runs geo-targeted ads on their forums, including forums who use the free OpenX ad severing platform, use the GeoIP binary database I mentioned. Using large data sets of flat files is both inefficient and (often) inaccurate.

There is no difference using geoip to target ads to countries than using geoip to block registration (or to take other actions based on IP address). The standard to do this is to use binary GeoIP databases (most people, including Apache, use the free MaxMind version). That is how we do it on 4 different servers and it works with 99.5% accuracy (the free version) and is updated monthly. The commercial version is said to be 99.8% accurate (which most people don't need).

Not sure why you are arguing this point. Sorry, that is why I find your replies "odd", because, first of all this mod is not "essential". There are other ways that are considered "better" to manage spam (like using a Bayesian classifer, Akismet, etc.). Second, there are some basic features that all vB mods have (like an option to turn it on and off), and Third, there are much better (and faster, accurate and efficient) GeoIP databases, like the one used with Apache's mod_geoip, which is basically a "standard" these days (since it is also used at the core of the OpenX ad server as well).

Having one GeoIP database is much better than two, especially when the one I am mentioning is basically the defacto standard for people who want GeoIP for free.

On other technical point. The database this mod current uses does not identify Anonymous Proxy IP addresses. If you want to stop spam or block hacker registrations, you must be able to identify Anonymous Proxy servers. The database I am suggesting (and the one most forum owners use, BTW), identifies these Anonymous Proxy servers.