As I said in the thread mentioned above, I appreciate an attempt at culling spam. However, as with literally everything in life you CANNOT stop people who don't follow rules by making more rules. That's like handing a heroin addict a bag of heroin and saying don't do the heroin. They're going to do the heroin. It's how it works.
Someone willing to break the old rules will break the new rules. It's that simple imo.
You can slow their progress, however you also slow the experience for actual users looking to engage with the site. More rules solves nothing it just makes the spammers find a new way to get through and screws over/inconveniences the real members.
Prohibition is a great example of this (both drug and alcohol), you can't plug the dam. In both those instances, the illegality directly led to more dangerous and clever workarounds.
It's an onslaught and you just make life harder for real members. Again just in my opinion, if seeing a tiny link bothers you that much, report, leave the thread, and ignore. Making stricter rules is grasping for control no one will never gain.
Not trying to be rude or inconsiderate I just think spam will always exist and trying to find elaborate ways to stop it is pointless and generally leads to counter-intuitive UX. As I believe it would in this case.
Also in this regard, what forum has anyone visited that doesn't allow profile links? Every one I can think of allows this. How is it degrading anyone's experience to see a link they don't have to click? While I understand not liking spammy posts, just don't read them? It's literally as simple as hitting back and not opening the thread anymore and now you don't have spam. Adjusting entire code blocks just so someone can't have a link in their profile because maybe they'd spam seems so out of line with necessary and qualitative development to me.
It's probably just me, but this seems like such a "let's be exclusive" non-issue.
