Board Registration

[davygora]

Dear administrators and moderators, please do not misunderstand me, I am not going to criticize you badly. It's just that I had a newbie question about CSS, because my website (based on a free template which I downloaded from some website) was not correctly displayed in IE8 (while displaying correctly in Firefox, Opera, Chrome, etc.). I have found this website and this board which seem to be a good source of all possible information all around HTML, CSS, etc. So I registered myself, but before I could post anything (or even modify my profile), my account had to be validated by the administrator. Now, I don't know how exactly do you decide whether to validate an account, knowing only the nickname (one can't add any personal information to the profile before validation), but I'm sure you have your own ideas and reasons. But what I wanted to say is this: after registering I decided not to waste my time and to try and figure out something myself. And so after looking precisely at my website in IE I figured out the source of the problem: it did not like negative margins of <div> objects. Having very few knowledge of css, I still had enough intuition to correct the style.css file in such a way that no margins were negative anymore but the output was still the same in Firefox, Opera, etc. and now also in IE8. I didn't write it to boast about myself. It's just that if I hadn't found this solution, I'd have waited for two days before my account validation. It's not that I was in a hurry, but maybe some other people will be. And this validation procedure, in my humble opinion, from the point of view of a simple board user, does nothing but delaying the opportunity to ask a question and get help. Having said that, I want to repeat again, that I'm not criticizing the board itself or anyone personally. In fact, the board seems to be a very great source of help and information, so thank you that you're there, and maybe some other time I will ask you for help. Best regards, Yuriy

[Synook]

While most users are good people signing up to contribute in a positive way to this forum, we do get many spammers that try to register with the aim of ruining the experience for everyone. With the information gained during your sign-up process (which is more than just your username), we are able to use the tools available to determine with a high degree of accuracy whether someone is signing up to spam the board or not.While validation has been taking a while in the recent past, new changes in our administrative structure mean that the process should be completed much more quickly now. While we do understand that it is an inconvenience for new users, we also believe that the potential destructive damage of spammers to affect the entire board's population, including newly-validated members, makes that inconvenience worthwhile.

[thescientist]

plus, this all free...

[justsomeguy]

Hi Yuriy,I apologize for the delay in validation recently, we were left with 1 person to validate everyone and the queue was getting backed up. We've got more admins validating users now, so in the future things should go quicker. Recently some of the admins left and others joined, so it was just a slow process to get everything moving. I understand why you're frustrated with validation, but it turns out that around 5-10% of accounts are created by spammers, so if we didn't have validation then it would create a lot more work for the moderators to clean up the spam and ban the spammers, and the spam would disturb the other discussions. Like Synook said, we do have more information than just your username, so we're normally able to identify the spammers pretty accurately when they sign up.

[davygora]

Thank you all very much for your answers! And hey, you don't have to apologize, I didn't want to blame you on anything. Sorry if it did sound like that.

[jeffman]

This thread is about done, but let me add how much I appreciate what the admins do to keep us safe from spammers. I've been a regular here for 2+ years, and the number of uncontrolled spam attacks in that time has been few. When they do occur, they are disasters. The board is hijacked for 8-12 hours with hundreds of porn and Viagra advertisements, and no one gets any work done. Even after the attack, many people who would like to post are reluctant, so work slows down. The effects of an 8-hour attack can be felt for 24-36 hours.A registration delay is unfortunate for everyone. But if it keeps the number of attacks down, it is certainly worth it.

[wmtipton]

Thank you all very much for your answers! And hey, you don't have to apologize, I didn't want to blame you on anything. Sorry if it did sound like that.

I know where youre coming from, I also know the pain it is trying to keep spammers and porn off a forum.Ive tried huge htaccess files that really bogged down my websites trying to leave forums more open, but in the end they always get thru, so it ends up being that only admin activation of one sort or another will keep the spam freaks out.What Ive done on my different forums is made it so the person can sign up and even post, but until Ive approved their first post none of them will show on the public forum. That way the person can at least ask their question so they dont just not bother after their account is approved.Im not sure what options the admins have here with this forum software, but it seems to work for ours pretty well. Usually spammers do what they do from post 1, so its typically easy enough to tell if they are signing up to spam right from the start.But with so many porn spammers out there admins have to be careful if they dont want it on their forum.We had one Christian forum I webmaster that ended up with a couple dozen threads started by spammer who had porn pics and links all over the forum while we were sleeping. We had to go back to admin activation too to keep it from happening again.It does stink when you need a question answered and have to wait, tho