What can be done to prevent spam in forum-like apps?

Question

Are there ways except CAPTCHAs for web apps like pastie.org or p.ramaze.net? CAPTCHAs take too long for a small paste for my taste.

Answer 1

You could try Akismet. It is very good at blocking spam, could be free (depending on your use) and has APIs for numerous web apps.

Your two aren't listed though, so some work would be required to get it to work with them. Is pastie.org rails based? If so, then there is a rails API for Akismet.