<3 I was replying to both of you, really (the handy thing about replying to someone on someone else's journal is you know they'll both get the notification!) but I know we're all in variously similar boats bobbing along this turbulent river of an industry! I think of both of you as cool and successful writers (whose work I love!) but there are so many ways to be more or less unknown in the grand scheme of things.

Which is what's so rough about the situation. A few bad faith actors with some time and technology on their hands, making things harder for so very many of good faith actors.

But anyway, yes, very true about idea 1! (And for all my little self-pity party moment up there, I do really appreciate that you're looking for productive ways to address the issue, whereas I've just been hoping that the people who run magazines figure it out. Not optimally helpful!) There could also be green M&Ms clauses of sorts, if you know what I mean -- something to include in your submission file to show that you read the directions, that changes venue to venue or even month to month within a venue. I do really like the idea of little tests like that that shouldn't take writers much effort beyond reading the submissions page, but would weed out the spammers who can't be bothered to do that.