I've been experimenting, but am still wary of converting to the RC yet, because, as stable as I found it, it's still an RC and is officially warned not to use on sites besides for testing. However, SMF 2.0 does contain a LOT of security upgrades, and just playing around with some of them leads me to think they will end up very effective. However, for our current version, there isn't really much of anything left that I haven't already tried.
I have a feeling that updating to 1.1.12 may have broken some of the addons (tabs in posting, for example), but the security ones seem fine, but I'll try and run some tests when I get the time, make sure they are working and all.
Of course, it *is* true that eventually, when we do upgrade to SMF 2.0, we will need access to the server. Either I'll need an FTP account or the Glest Team will have to do it when they have the time. But it's been an RC for a while, and still will be for a bit longer, so that's not for a bit.
Of course, you can never remove all bots. Everything has them, from online games to forums to chat rooms, they cannot really be completely eradicated, which, of course, is what you have moderator privileges for: to remove said posts. And of course, should they ever get really disruptive, they can get banned.
