[Bagger Lance]

Hmm. You might want to try:

• Keeping the email verification
• Making sure it goes out as plain text and not html
• Changing the message body from the default & try to rid it from what spam filter might be set to catch, such as "click here to..." etc.
• Displaying a MESSAGE YOU CAN'T MISS on the registering page telling to check their spam folder.

Metallion,

Thanks for the suggestions -
We discussed keeping the email verification, but there were hundreds that couldn't complete the registration process, including some golf professionals.
Spam filters are pretty sophisticated, but also pretty dumb. By default the better ones filter anything thats not in a users approved list of email providers.

From an administration standpoint, we spend far less time monitoring for spam posts than we did answering emails regarding the registration process.
We are looking at some tools to prevent spam posts. This is a common problem with forums.

We aren't dealing with human beings for the most part, these are automated programs that seek, register, and post messages without human involvement. Once in a while we get a real person posting spam, and we can capture their email (usually bogus) and IP address (usually spoofed) but at least we can report something to the sending ISP to make their miserable lives even more miserable.